1942: Joint Strike – Review | Brandon Hofer's Portfolio

1942: Joint Strike is a pretty faithful recreation of the arcade classic, although it is not a port. You can either choose to go through the campaign by yourself or hook up with a friend to try and fly through the campaign. The game runs seamlessly with no frame rate issues at all for both single as well as multiplayer. The game is also in a high definition widescreen format, which means there won’t be any borders on each side of the game like in some past retro titles.

When you start the game you are greeted with the option of either starting off a single player game or an Xbox Live game. There are also leader boards in this game as well so you can see how you stack up against other players around the world. There are of course achievements to be earned in this title as well. Some of those achievements, such as the “Wingman” achievement, can only be gained while you are playing a co-op game with a friend. The achievements also seem to have a nice mixture of difficulty to acquire them. They range from getting 90% accuracy in one level to beating the game on the hardest setting. Once you pick the game type you want you then get to choose your difficulty setting all the way from “Penguin” to “Wing King”. Once that is done you will then get your choice out of three planes that you want to fly with each of them having different attributes as well as their own set of pros and cons.

Once you do all of that you are immediately thrust into the game and it doesn’t take long until you are surrounded by enemy planes and you are having to dodge their bullets while at the same time trying to hit them with yours. Different types of ammo pop up from time to time as well as health packs and if you are doing really good you will see some 1Up icons floating around too. For an Xbox Live Arcade title this game looks fantastic and the online co-op plays just as smoothly as the single player campaign. If you enjoyed playing 1942 in the arcade then you should enjoy this title as well. Definitely be sure to download the demo and try it out and then if you enjoy the demo pick it up for 800 points. This is one of those games where it can be a lot of fun to play with your friends and relive the experience that you had in arcades years ago.