M.A.C.H: Modified Air Combat Heroes

File Size:  109.8 MB

File Type: CSO

Password: fire

Flying a jet seems like a complicated deal. You have to worry about flaps, landing gears and a plethora of switches and buttons on the instrument panel, but it's an experience that PC games have been cramming into complicated keyboard control schemes for years. M.A.C.H. (Modified Air Combat Heroes) showcases how well and how poorly simplicity works in videogames.

Developer Kuju Entertainment -- the folks behind SingStar Rocks and battalion Wars -- boiled M.A.C.H.'s controls down to the PSP's six main buttons to let its grunts jump in and get to blasting and barrel rolls. However, a seriously shallow single-player "Career" handicaps the game's chances of becoming a part of most libraries.

If you ignore the instruction manual and back of the game box -- and I know you will -- there's no story for M.A.C.H. other than you're in a plane and want to blow stuff up and win races. On one hand it's nice to see a game not heap on a cumbersome plot while it just wants a reason to shoot missiles, but the time saved by not creating a story should have been put towards crafting a better game -- there are five maps and 11 planes and that's it.

If the only reason I'm playing through five different difficulties is to upgrade my plane with better gear, I want to see a ton of maps and opponents.

The maps will switch between hosting races and dogfights as you work your way from rookie to hero difficulties, but those environments are always going to feature the same twists, turns and opponents whose codenames are simply the type of plane they are flying. This repetition is a shame. M.A.C.H. is a pretty title when you race (sunsets light up the sky as you and your winged cohorts crisscross over ancient ruins and dive into icy caverns) and features some fun gameplay elements (pick-ups can make your jet invisible, give you cluster rockets and unleash floating mines) but the relentless use of the same maps over and over again drain the fun from the fierce flights.

You could argue that the quest to pimp your planes is reason enough to ignore the fact that you've raced through Rio enough times to memorize the route before you're two-fifths through, but even the upgrade system is seriously lacking in M.A.C.H. You can add decals to the body of your beast, but they're mostly elements recycled from your opponents. You can upgrade your plane's wings, fins and more, but each part has but three options. Although other planes become available as you progress, if you stick with one, you can create a plane powerful enough to ensure victory after victory before you're even out of the second hardest difficulty.

Looking at its shallow single-player and watered-down upgrade system, it's clear developers just wanted to get gamers in the air to blast each other. In short, M.A.C.H. was made for multiplayer... kind of.

The game is designed to handle up-to 8-player Ad Hoc, and there's no shortage of explosions and near misses to ooh-and-ah over as you and your buds eradicate one another from the skies, but there's a catch. If you're sharing the game - i.e. only one of you is packing the M.A.C.H. UMD - your only choice is to dogfight in the Mardi Gras level. No races. No custom jets.

Lame.

If I could invest my $39.99 in this game and head online to battle people in whatever conditions I choose, I'd have no problem offering one map and one type of combat in game share mode, but you can't head online and find other M.A.C.H. users, and I doubt if Mardi Gras - the least detailed dogfight levels - is the best map to pull new gamers in.

M.A.C.H. Owner: See, I told you this game rocks.
M.A.C.H.-less friend: That was cool. Let's race!
M.A.C.H. Owner: Uh, no can do. You've had your taste, now buy the game.
M.A.C.H.-less Friend: We've only played for two minutes and you're the only person I know with this thing. I'm not sold.
M.A.C.H. Owner: You're ruining the publisher's business model!

Another fumble on multiplayer M.A.C.H. comes from the exclusion "challenge mode." When you get sick of the handful of single-player maps, gamers can test themselves in the mode's set of five mini-games that include collecting coins, a version of capture the flag and a laser-toting shootout.

It's not available for you and friends to play together.

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