Review | Triplane Turmoil II

Format: PC | Genre: Aerial shooter | Publisher: Draconus Entertainment | Developer: Draconus Entertainment | Release date: December 2009 | RRP: $19.99

By Craig Lager

At its heart, Triplane Turmoil II is an arcade game with cartoon visuals and simple controls. A callback to classic 2D dog fighting games, it sees you pilot various WWI fighters across 36 missions and has local multiplayer to boot (apparently Internet multiplayer is ‘under construction’). “Turmoil”, though, isn’t far from the truth.

The game advises you to play the six supplied tutorials, each meandering through how to control your rickety plane with a system of checkpoint gates and descriptive text. From the very first one, Triplane makes a distinguished effort to be more than a simple arcade aerial shooter. It explains how you will have to choose quantities of fuel, ammo and bombs to load – all of which add weight affecting your control. It explains that different planes have different capacities and characteristics. And then, finally, it lets you get a plane out of a hangar… and immediately demands you put it back without so much as starting the engine.

The tutorials are long and confused. Minutes are spent guiding you through pressing ‘A’ to go up and ‘D’ to go down, then scant seconds explaining how to effectively win a dogfight. You learn nothing past the bare minimum, which would be fine if it weren’t so slowly paced and tedious. By the end of the training – slumped in my chair, head resting on hand – the prospect of playing more was daunting. Only a notion that there would be more challenge, more dynamism, in the coming campaigns kept me going. I was half right.

//Up and down
In no way do the tutorials prepare you for the campaign. The first level is a test in persistence alone. Death comes quickly and unforgivingly from situations you haven’t been instructed on in the slightest. I have no clue how to avoid infantry equipped with seemingly infinitely accurate missile launchers, for example, yet it’s the first obstacle in your first mission’s path. I do know how to fly up and down, though. I can fly-up-and-down the hell out of that plane.

What’s worse with this wall of a learning curve is that each death means an overly long wait for the camera to lazily pan back to your hangar, then a wait to get the plane out, then a wait while you take off, and a wait while you fly back to where you were before. And when you do eventually get back, you’ll only die again anyway – there is no hint of how to cope any better with super WWI rockets and hawkeyed troops now than there was two long minutes ago.

There are redeeming features, however. The look, to start with. It’s not stunning, by any means, but it captures the retro feel that Triplane Turmoil II is all about without looking archaic. The sounds are nice, the controls are fine, and divebombing stationary targets is an absolute thrill – the dive providing a much needed burst of speed and the bomb providing a much needed explosion to jolt you back into the proceedings. Indeed, potential is spilling out of the game in plenty of places – but, without fail, it’s inevitably gathered up in a bucket of tedium and buried deep inside.

Triplane Turmoil II wasn’t happy being a simple arcade game. It got itself bogged down with unnecessary details: men pulling your plane to and from hangars; waiting so long to respawn; having to worry about weight versus flying time; the instant, unapologetic death. They’re needless distractions from what could have been a fun, cute-looking game where you fly a plane and blow stuff up. It’s utterly confused about what it wants to be. At $20, there is little to recommend here, especially when far more enjoyable – if admittedly less detailed – variations are available for free.

3/10

What does this score mean?

Triplane Turmoil II is available to purchase from this link here.