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Freaky Flyers - First Look Preview
TVG Staff
18/08/2003
We check out Midway's fuel filled, freakish racer on the PS2...
This game certainly lives up to its name in being a real freaky trip of ideas, which delivers a racing adventure, ala Aerial Cart-Racing with a unique cast that can freely explore the fully interactive 3-D World. Itās fast, itās furious, and itās down right mad. Coming on all formats, the basic premise is to embark on a twisted flight of adventure, which is cram packed with 13 intriguing, witty and outrageous characters whose stories intricately intertwine and play out against the backdrop of more than 25 dynamic environments.
On hand to thrill, entice and generally inform, was Jeff Buchanan - Producer of Freaky Flyers.
It can best be described as a game that can be excitingly easy-to-learn, but hard-to-master which is spiced up with a cast of in game comedians/characters - each with lots of jokes and visual humour, which is further extended with mini-games that add to a full gameplay experience.
Team Buchanan at Midway Internal in San Diego, California, is responsible for creating Freaky Flyers. The goal in creating Freaky was to make a unique, 3D, flying, race game with a strong focus on zany characters. In the words of the team, 'the game has both great art and fun design. An added bonus is the 2-player mode for either race or dogfight that is really funā.
The background story to the game is of an Alien from outer space that comes to Earth and arranges to have the world's best flyers enter an aerial race. His sinister goal is to personally defeat the best racer! The player's main goal is to win every race, clear the mini levels, and defeat the evil alien, Pilot X.
āEach race level in Freaky Flyers is an immense course that contains many unique and hidden features. There are interactive items such as trees, rocks, and ice that can be shot and dropped on your opponents, and each level has dangerous inhabitants that will try to shoot you down. The Freaky engine is really pushing a lot of polygons in these levels and the Team is excited about what we'll do on our next game with our growing technology."
Freaky Flyers takes gamers to exciting locations such as Exotic Danger Island, where lush jungles and lagoons teem with all manner of perils, from pirates to pythons. Players may also find themselves in Roaring Chicago for a swinging time in the big city or in the depths of Haunted Transylvania; a dark and foreboding destination filled with craggy peeks and haunted castles. In addition, players can travel with more than a dozen unique and alluring characters such as the true-blue American hero, Johnny Turbine, the pinnacle of German discipline, Traci Torpedoes, or the spicy bandita from south of the border, Cactus Rose.
"There are more than 25 intricate 3D tracks to master and all 13 of the main characters have unique characteristics, and there are different plane configurations among them that allow for such things as better handling, stronger armour, faster speed, etc. Each one of these characters has a unique story line that the player can follow through the Adventure mode in FMV's and newsflashes."
Skill-oriented stunt flying provides the player with the buzz of doing dangerous aerial stunts and competitive aerial dogfighting combat allows players to unleash their inner warrior. There are also numerous challenging boss encounters to give that extra bit of weight to the game!
With mid air confrontations, stunts galore and plenty of other outrageous action it is good to know that actually playing the game will be very intuitive. āThe Team worked a long time to get the controls to a state where everyone agreed that they were just right. Doing stunts is relatively simple in execution. The stunts are most useful in the dogfights than in any other event in the game. Loop de loops and barrel rolls can be used to put you in a good machine gun position on you opponent, or to avoid the opponents fire."
To heighten the fun and ambience there are 8 original tracks of music, plus more than 90 minutes of cinematics follow each character's unique and engaging storyline as it unfolds in a movie-quality presentation.
If you enjoy a real challenge then you have the choice of playing the game as a single player against multi npc aircraft, or in a 2-player mode against another player, either with or without the npc aircraft. (Turn off or on the npc aircraft just before starting a game from the options menu.) Between the machine guns, and powerups such as missiles, rockets, and anti gravity mines, the player can cause a lot of damage to both the other aircraft and things in the levels.
Itās all-self explanatory, so Jeff would have us believe.
āTo find your way through the levels you need only watch the direction of the npc aircraft and follow them through. Because of the size of these levels, players should watch the fly through that plays before the beginning of each race to get an idea of the track layout. There are roads, and railroad tracks that mark the paths of some courses, but the fun thing to do is to explore the levels and find the fastest course. (Hint: completing the sub goal missions the player can open up 3 different boost highways per level, that accelerate your speed when you fly through the boost rings.) Humour can be found in the game by the situations that occur during game play, in the comments of the npc characters, and in the FMV stories."
And the rewards and progression line to the game?
āFreaky is really simple in this regard, we offer aerial racing / combat fun, that is something different each time you play it. As you play the game you can unlock new characters and planes, movies, and even jukeboxes of all the music in the game, and some that isn't!"
Strange that there are also 20 secret characters to unlock which does not make them secret - Jeff explained.
āWe tell the players that there are all of these characters to be found in the game. The secret is what they look like and the kind of aircraft they fly. The challenge will be in finding them all in all these giant levels! Once the player has unlocked them, they can be flown in normal race mode, mini games, or dogfight."
With all this in mind, 'the sheer size and complexity of the race courses, the number of character that can be found and flown, the great art style, and the sheer fun of the racing / combat experience will really appeal to console gamers and keep them engaged in hours of fun. The 90 minutes of FMV's, (cinematic footage), that the player can experience by playing the 13 main characters in Adventure mode will help tell the story of the Freaky Flyers race from the perspective of each one of the characters', was the final last words spoken on the merits of the game by Jeff...
Letās hope it lives up to their expectations!
