Larry Holland should not be a new name to PC gamers. This is the guy responsible for bringing X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and of course Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe to our respective hard disks. All of them classics as far as I’m concerned. So my natural reaction to hearing about Secret Weapons Over Normandy was to get ready to join the fucking RAF. This weekend the official demo was released, and once again those ass goblins at Gamespy have played the “exclusive” card and made the fans bend over backwards.

Gamespy’s obsession with exclusivity must be an attempt to remain relevant to the community, because one could care less about the reviews they’ve been crapping out lately. Once you unpack the demo, it doesn’t install. Instead it contacts a remote server and spits out a registration code. That’s right, you need a registration code to play a god damned demo. The concept makes my spleen sizzle with anger. What the fuck are they thinking? I want to try Lucasarts’ latest game and they make me do all this bullshit first? As if waiting in a download queue wasn’t bad enough.

Notice I haven’t even mentioned the quality of the game yet. Like the headaches associated with getting Call of Duty to run, I sucked it down Daikatana style and installed the demo. When the game starts it asks for your “unique identification code so this demo can only be played on this computer”. Imagine my eyes rolling back into my head at this point, if you can.

The game plays fine in 1600×1200, but for reasons only known to multi-platform developers the menus and hangar interface are stuck at a god awful 800×600. The graphics are incredibly disappointing in-game. Maybe all this recent Gamecube playing has spoiled me, but the model textures are so low-res it’s almost laughable. The engine itself is adequate and gets the job done, but I’m very reluctant to lavish any praise. My ability to fly through the paper thin trees or buildings during bombing missions didn’t help.

As with any game I rarely take a look at the controls until I start fumbling my way through actually playing. I quickly realized I had to use my Gravis Xterminator if I wanted to control my Hurricane and dispatch meine Feinde with ease. The game’s playing style is a little too arcade for my tastes, but I was willing to overlook it while playing the demo’s campaign. After a while though I realized that the plane handled like a supercharged tank with wings, as I could hardly pull off any tight maneuvers. Tweaking the controls (the ones you were able to tweak) didn’t do much and proved to be more frustrating if anything else. Furthermore, the camera views never really worked to my advantage, and after becoming somewhat skilled as a Tankbuster in BF1942, it was a little frustrating to watch myself miss ground targets repeatedly on bomb ing runs.

I can understand what Totally Games and Lucasarts were trying to do. I mean what game developer doesn’t want to capitalize on the Industry’s current obsession with WW II, and for the PC gamers, the Secret Weapons heritage? This game is nothing more than a distant relative to Luftwaffe, simplified and distilled for console gamers everywhere. Crimson Skies this is not – the PC version doesn’t even have multiplayer.

If you’re looking for a WW II Air Combat sim, you’d be hard pressed to find one in this game. However if all you need is an arcade-styled shooter based on the European Air War in WWII, I’m sure Secret Weapons Over Normandy will suit just fine. To be honest though all it made me want to do is re-install IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles. It at least provided me with a more in depth – and highly playable – experience.

Update: It looks like the demo has escaped the clutches of Gamespy. You can get it at 3D Gamers or even Worthplaying if you feel like it.