iPhone Review: Top Gun
by Carter Dotson
Genre: Action/Arcade
Price: $3.99
Verdict: Buy It.
Pros: Solid gameplay, great controls, some truly wacky extras.
Cons: Missions can go on for a bit long, some targets hard to lock on to with your missiles.
The 80s were a strange and wondrous time. Cold War. Ronald Reagan. The Safety Dance. Top Gun. Relive those (great?) times with Top Gun on the iPhone. And even if this crazy doesn’t appeal to you, then it’s still worth checking out, it’s a solid action-arcade game even if you weren’t a fan of Top Gun back in the ’80s and don’t understand what the big deal with the movie is.
Oh noes, it's the danger zone!
Top Gun for the iPhone has you playing as a new recruit to the Top Gun program under Iceman and Maverick, as you train to fight the commies. Yeah, that’s right, in what appear to be modern times, you’re fighting communists. Awesome. At least it’s not Muslim extremists, as frankly, that’s just a played out cliche that even 24 is trying to avoid referencing as actual threats now. So it’s fun to be taking out commies, even though the USSR went the way of the dodo a while back and the remaining communist powers’ air forces don’t exactly scare me. But enough of idle civilian military strategy talk. You have 10 missions to go on, most of which consist of flying around in an on-rails fashion (like Star Fox) and shooting down targets and avoiding missiles that pop up in…you guessed it, the DANGER ZONE (Kenny Loggins would be so proud) that appear across the areas of the screen, and you must get out of the way before taking damage. So yeah, actually, don’t do as Kenny Loggins has done before you and don’t take the highway to the Danger Zone. In fact, just get the hell out of there.
What makes Top Gun so good and not just another licensed game is that the controls work. You use the accelerometer to fly the ship around and aim (the game feels a lot like Star Fox in that regard), hold down on the left side of the screen to fire machine guns, and when you lock on to targts by moving your aiming reticule over them, tap on the right side to fire your missiles, simple as that. The game lets you calibrate your neutral position, so you’re not forced to hold your device at a specific angle to play like other games – you play at the angle you’re comfortable at. Now, for any developers reading, you need to pay attention to this – some, if not most, people’s ‘neutral position’ when it comes to accelerometer-based games is not the same as the ‘flat’ positions many games require you to play. It’s the most annoying part about games that require tilting motions, and Top Gun’s ability to calibrate your neutral position is a huge plus.
Use the car. It's exactly what they're NOT expecting.
The game only features 10 missions, but the missions will require a few retries, as the game starts to pick up the challenge right around the 3rd mission, although this is partially because taking out the boat targets is a challenge with enemy planes trying to shoot you down simultaneously. Still, many of the missions will take several tries to beat as you get so close to completing your objective but go down a blaze of glory. Or shame of defeat. For the record, I always went down in a blaze of glory, because I cannot lose unwillingly. I’m like the Most Interesting Man in the World, except I don’t have any beer commercials…yet. Still, it will challenge you, but the game’s fun enough to soldier on through in order to try and complete it.
...I got nothing
Top Gun also has a whimsical feel about it – from the fact that you’re fighting communists in modern times to the artwork not quite being all that great (to the artist who drew the portraits of the characters, if you were intentionally trying to make them look good, I’m kind of sorry for insulting you, but they do look funny), to the secrets in the game. By changing your name to different things, you can unlock some funny ways to play – by putting in Cole Trickle, you can play as a flying stock car, by putting in Laserface Jones, you can play as a flying futuristic space fighter, and by putting in Volleyball, you can play a 1 or 2 player game of volleyball (more like Pong, really) with Goose and Maverick’s heads. With Iceman’s grave in the background. It’s ridiculous and must be seen to be believed. It’s almost worth buying the game just for this, one of the wackiest easter eggs I’ve seen in a while. And that’s in a game where you can take part in high-stakes dogfights in a flying stock car. The main game itself is a really well-done and fun package, but the extras just push it over the top.
Top Gun is unequivocally worth a purchase. It’s a great action title for the system with exceptional controls and some unique extras that really make it worth a purchase, cheesy license or no. So go check it out. I’m off to the Danger Zone, see you suckers later.
I found some great tips and tricks for the game on a website click here to check it out.