The Digest: Completely breaking the tradition of poorly licensed games, Snoopy Flying Ace emerges as one of the best titles available on Xbox Live Arcade, and is something no one should be without, and at the price of 800 MSP, there’s absolutely no reason for you not to download it yourself!

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: June 02, 2010
PUBLISHER: Xbox LIVE Arcade
DEVELOPER: Smart Bomb Interactive
ESRB RATING: “E10” for Ages 10 and Up
GENRE: Flight Action

PRODUCT OVERVIEW: Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang take to the skies in one of the most strangest combinations you’ve probably seen to date. Tackle the campaign with a friend in coop play, or compete with up to sixteen others for air supremacy. Maybe you’ll even encounter the Red Baron himself. Think you’re tough enough to take him on?

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Single Player Campaign, Playable in coop.
• Sixteen Person Online Support
• Avatar Support
• Online Ranking System

Now, before you ask “Why in the world is Snoopy in an aerial combat game?!,” it might surprise you to find out that this isn’t his first outing into the skies. Snoopy’s last game, Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron looked promising, but ended up being a mediocre title. With Snoopy Flying Ace, Smart Bomb has learned from their mistakes and have completely turned around and made one of the best titles to ever grace Xbox Live Arcade.

If you’re not familiar with the back story for Snoopy Flying Ace (and how aren’t you?), here’s a little information: When not around any humans, Snoopy (of Peanuts fame) sometimes acts like a fighter pilot from World War I, fighting off imaginary Germans, and taking on his arch enemy, the Red Baron. His doghouse also goes as far as to take bullet damage, but in the end, it all disappears, as all of that happened within Snoopy’s imagination. Snoopy Flying Ace takes that idea and completely expands it tenfold, bringing with it many of the members of the Peanuts gang into World War I combat, even going as far as to giving the Peanuts characters sides of the war. For example, Charlie Brown and Linus are members of the American Army, while Lucy and Pigpen are German.  It only gets more weird from there, with huge rocket launchers, EMP mines, and giant molten flails under your plane allegedly from World War I.

Massive Molten flails. Hell yeah.

The single player campaign takes Snoopy around many fake locations of Europe, and has Snoopy completing simple objectives such as defending a giant Sphinx (that seems completely out of place being in Europe), to just taking out all the enemies in a level. These campaign levels are mostly training for the multiplayer component, with the exception of one type of mission: Zeppelin defending.

These missions completely ignore the laid back style of the game, and increase the difficulty way too far. Even some gamers that consider themselves professionals will have issues with these missions, I can guarantee that. There was at least one or two times where I just stopped playing because the Zeppelin bombed my base with just two or three points of health left after I had continuously flooded it with rockets and bullets.

Once in a while, famous Peanuts characters will fly in campaign as well, either being on your side, or against you. Enemies such as Pigpen aren’t much more of a threat than regular enemies, they usually just have a health boost, so it isn’t much of an issue to take them out. Lucy, on the other hand, loves her poison rockets, and will spam them the second she gets the chance. I was taken out about three times at my spawn point because Lucy had a great spot to just kill me over and over.

Sadly, the infamous Red Baron suffers the same fate as the rest of the characters. The dangerous, ruthless Red Baron is just a slightly stronger enemy than the average soldier. Yes, it would make sense, considering every World War I plane would more than likely have the same amount of health, but in a world where early 20th century planes have rockets, miniguns, and floating mines, I would’ve liked the Red Baron to be much more of a threat than being the same as just another soldier.

Like I said, all of the single campaign is just training for the real purpose of the game: Multiplayer. Snoopy Flying Ace is some of the most insane multiplayer arcade games to come out in recent memory. Think of it as a lighthearted Modern Warfare 2 for the skies. You select your favorite character, or even your Xbox Live Avatar, a plane, your two favorite weapons, and you’re off. The gametypes consist of your standards, such as Team Deathmatch, Free For All, and even Capture the Flag. Pigskin is an aerial version of football (American Football), and Dogpile is keepaway, similar to Oddball from Halo. Most all of these gametypes end up being a beautiful mess of explosions and death… and it’s glorious.

If you’re doing particularly well on the killing side of things, you’ll earn a few killstreaks, (Yes… killstreaks in a Peanuts game) which will empower your plane and help you kill more stuff! The Woodstock killstreak makes him land on the tail of your plane with dual magnums as he starts shooting anything that’s behind you, and the Doghouse killstreak puts you in the cockpit of Snoopy’s iconic doghouse, with increased speed and health, but slows your health regeneration speed. If you’re not doing so hot, you’ll earn the Blockhead deathstreak, giving you increased health, similar to Modern Warfare 2’s Painkiller deathstreak.

Conclusion: Even though I was waiting for this game to release for years, I honestly didn’t expect it to be this good of a game. Multiplayer is some of the most well put together online play you’ll see on Xbox Live Arcade, ranking up with games such like Castle Crashers, but the Single Player component is a little on the shallow side. But then again, you aren’t buying this for a solo campaign, are you? If you can get past the cute and cuddly Snoopy characters, you’ll find a perfect side game for combat loving gamers. Even people that aren’t usually into games like this should at least try it.

Single Player: 4/5 | Multi-Player: 5/5

Special thanks to Smart Bomb Interactive for providing us with a copy of the game for review.