Top Gun

by Titus

Product Features

• Players will experience what a combat pilot can actually face - high-altitude dogfights, low-flying blitz attacks, rescues and more
• Fight against dozens of airborne and ground-based enemy vehicles to prove you're a Top Gun pilot
• Challenging missions in different light & weather conditions -- from Southeast Asia, the Arctic Circle, oil rigs, vast deserts and more
• Multiple planes to fly -- master the top 5 U.S. Navy fighters and you'll unlock even more
• New Replay Mode lets you view the entire mission, from multiple camera angles

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00004WYZD
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 30, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,029 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation 2

Amazon.com Review

Top Gun was an extremely popular movie in its day for many reasons (male camaraderie and Tom Cruise's looks, to name two), but the Top Gun: Combat Zones game features straight-up aerial dogfighting and ground targeting, with little sense of character, none of the film's music or one-liners--nothing, in fact, but the logo. It's odd that Titus even bothered getting the film's license; if they were simply making a basic action jet sim, why bother evoking the film at all? Still, Top Gun: Combat Zones looks and plays good, which is all that matters for some gamers.

The title takes place over four real-world locations: Southeast Asia, the Russian Arctic, the Persian Gulf (no country specified), and the U.S. herself (training missions). Despite the theater of operations, we're given no background on what war we're fighting; we simply receive briefings that outline targets and enemy aircraft from a faceless commander. The missions--there are 30 total--don't add up to anything story wise, and mainly focus on targeting, weapon management, and lots and lots of jet-to-jet fighting. The game also includes a multiplayer and Instant Action mode, in which you can play for a score.

Weapon management is paramount, as you only have a small load of missiles. You do have unlimited ammo in your cannon, but it's difficult to destroy most targets with that. There are a wide range of flyable aircraft, beginning with the F-14 Tomcat and moving on to better-made, more complicated, and more mission-specific craft such as the Osprey, Harrier, and F-4 Phantom. All aircraft but the Tomcat are locked up at the start of the game, forcing you to conquer the single-player missions to access the rest. It's actually sort of annoying, as the campaign isn't much more interesting than the Instant Action missions.

But it all looks really good. The different environments--a sea of snow in the Arctic, brown-dune seas in the Gulf, the oceans, purple mountain majesties, and even realistic-looking cities--all look less bland than they sound. Atmospheric effects such as clouds and sunsets are breathtaking, and everything explodes real nice.

As a console flight sim, Top Gun: Combat Zones is decent; as an action game it's above average; but it is certainly not the homage to the film that buyers might expect. If jets are your thing, though, you still can't go wrong. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

• Stunning graphics and satisfying combat
• Plenty of combat and replayability

Cons:

• No sense of character or story
• All but one of the aircraft are locked at the start

Product Description

Top Gun: Combat Zones - Become one of the world's greatest fighter pilots, and earn the right to be called the best of the best: Top Gun! Face enemy jets in thrilling missions, where you'll earn points & rank by flying with speed and style, and taking out as many enemy installations as possible. Build your own new missions - Choose your plane, terrain and difficulty level, in Quickstart Mode

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK Sim, Good Arcade Action, Waste of the Franchise, August 28, 2002

By 

Tyril132 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Top Gun (Video Game)

Being a huge fan of flight sims, I was highly anticipating the release of Top Gun: Combat Zones. Was it worth the wait? Well... yes and no. There are a few points that need to be addressed first.

First, if you're looking for extremely realistic flight sim action, look elsewhere. Top Gun looks and plays like an early-90's arcade shooter; turn-and-burn shooting, strangely being able to destroy almost anything in one shot, and the alarming ability to hit things with missiles when they're speeding by your starboard side at 900+ mph.

Second, and perhaps most importantly; Top-Gun has basically nothing to do with the cult-hit movie except for the franchise name, the default high-score name "Maverick" and the extremely sparse use of the words "Top Gun Academy" in mission briefings.

Third... the gameplay is pretty good, but there are a few minor quirks like spontaneously blowing up for "flying to close to the ground" at 200 feet, or crashing into poles/bridges/buildings/whatever even if you ordinarily wouldn't have hit the object.

That said, Top-Gun is not a bad game; on the contrary, it's a pretty good game for the first few hours. The action is nice, the graphics are pretty good (not quite as good as AC4, though) and the fair selection of planes and missions are sufficient. Unfortunately, given the lack of any real story or briefings, and the repetitiveness of the gameplay, it gets old after awhile, and there's not really anything that makes you want to play through the game a second time.

In short, only die-hard Top-Gun or arcade flight sim fans should buy this game without at least renting it first... and if you do like it, you can look forward to many hours of great arcade-style action.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you like to waste money, don't bother reading this., November 24, 2001

By 

mptesteroni (Preparing to mount) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Top Gun (Video Game)

Okay, I’ve had Top Gun: Combat Zones for over a week now and while I wanted to enjoy it (...) I feel pretty comfortable telling you all that it, in fact, BLOWS. Usually, I’m willing to stick it out through long stretches of boredom, sluggish and unrealistic physics models, awkward to nearly unplayable controls, monotonous environments and unrealistic and sparse enemies long enough to get to the point where a game begins to shine, but Top Gun has two problems. First, there is already a MUCH better game available (...). Second, I don’t really believe this “game” is going to improve anywhere if I play it any more. So, now that I’ve popped it out of the PS2 and taken a deep breath and counted to ten, I can relax enough to explain why anyone over nine years old would do well to avoid this stinkbomb (...)
As usual, eyecandy is king in the world of video zealotry, so graphics first. Top Gun’s visuals are alright--at first, until you get close to the ground, where the textures are all big stinking rectangular pixels which have no place coming from the Emotion Engine inside the PS2. You don’t really see any enemy units or planes enough to be able to make a fair critique of their models, but your plane looks pretty good--at first. Until you start wondering… why is it that in the replays, the Tomcat looks like a MIG-29 Fulcrum from the front, and a Panavia Tornado from the side? And what’s up with all the PS1-looking machine gun bullets (pointy orange rectangles which fire most unmachine gun-like in a PERFECTLY STRAIGHT LINE)? Explosions, those wonderful expanding balls of devastation with which we humans are so fascinated? Check out the Academy Mission where you take out the chemical factories and you tell me if those yellow puffs of gas that seep out when your missile hits are supposed to be “explosions”. The aircraft itself flies sluggishly, but it doesn’t matter because you’ll never get into a turning dogfight anyway (read on…). Usually a flight game gives you an obsolete model to start with, like the F-4 of AC4 . Here you start with a Tomcat (admittedly an old design but still combat-effective, (...)) but it might as well be an Me 262 for all the responsiveness in the controls.

Did the game designers really think that replacing time-tested HUD concepts with video-gamey (...)would preserve the “arcade” feel and fun of this game? (...)Why did they replace the bombsight lollipop, already so well known to anyone who’s ever dropped a video bomb from any flight simulator aircraft, with this stupid third-person overhead and cartoon crosshair? This makes you crash the plane as you slowly descend from an out-of body-experience perspective. And WHY OH WHY was the targeting carat taken out in favor of this big stupid orange <OBJECTIVE> on the side of the screen, which you have to use in conjunction with a line graph on the bottom of the screen AND the non-scalable radar to determine whether red air is above or below you? This unmanageable arrangement makes no sense whatsoever, as it makes ACM with enemy aircraft nearly impossible. (...)It is ridiculously hard to line up on the six of even a MIG-17 Fresco in this game due to the targeting system. During one “A2A” (jeez that’s SO clever) mission the only airborne targets I could FIND were Mi-24 helicopters, and that was only because they DON’T MOVE, they just sit there like levitated tanks (which they may as well be, since they both apparently carry the exact same weapon system), waiting to get shot down. The rest of the planes were lazily circling overhead, acting like there wasn’t a US Navy fighter below hunting desperately for them while it took out all the friendly choppers. Oh, I see… the jokes on me? Could it be that the AI is actually super-intelligent, as the enemy fighters know that they don’t have to waste fuel trying to kill me because I WON’T BE ABLE TO FIND THEM?

(...) EVERY ENEMY UNIT FIRES THE SAME EXACT 60MM ORANGE-RECTANGLE CHAIN GUN AT YOU! Why bother carving out a clear approach corridor from AA fire before you take out a T-72 tank? (...)In short, it’s every bit as good as the movie it’s named after, and I hope that means there won’t be a Top Gun 2 the Game either.
(...)

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For 'Real Gamers' as well as casual players, September 4, 2001

By 

"mavericksshades" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Top Gun (Video Game)

Even if its release date slips this game is pretty much finished now, and the new demos doing the rounds at shows and events really show the potential that this game has. Most everyone mentions the visuals in this game, so I'll talk about something else... Its great to see designers return to a good old-fashioned arcade blast!! This game is about scoring points, pure and simple. Score the points, get the golds, receive the unlocks = Sweet. Your score racks up as you play, just like on an old arcade machine, and points values zip all over the screen as you wreak havoc, all adding to the action.

It goes deeper than this though, or so it seems. Watching the gameplay, you start to see intricacies in the scoring system that hardcore gamers are crying out for: there are chances for score bonuses littered everywhere, hidden ones as well as the obvious damage, accuracy and time bonuses you get at the end of a successful mission. For example, it looks like multipliers are attached to each weapon, so you gain more for using the harder unguided weapons and your main gun, also bonuses mount up for 'skill shots' (which look to be long-distance kills), and for 'snap shots' and 'fluke shots', whatever they are! Like other games, you can also boost your scores by skimming close to the terrain as you play through the mission, and what terrain! You can really throw your plane around and through the gaps in the masses of buildings, pipework, canyons and rock outcrops that show up in the demo levels.

Hopefully (if they get it right!) this kind of gameplay will let you play missions in the style you want to, either fast and dirty Maverick style to timetrial yourself, or tight and clinical Iceman style for high accuracy.

Some things still look rough around the edges in this game, I guess thats whats still being worked on, but I'm looking forward to this one!!

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