User Reviews (1 - 10 of 10)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Good concept, so-so execution

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: July 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've played most of BAM!'s PS2 line now: Dropship, Way of the Samurai, and Wipeout Fusion. In every case, the game concept has been interesting/cool, but the actual gameplay and implementation of the ideas just don't deliver a consistenly fun experience.

Dropship's concept is intriguing: pilot a large troop/armor transport around a battlefield to pick up and deliver combat units and occasionally hop into the driver's seat or turret of one of the ground vehicles to carry out a mission. Visions of the dropship/APC units from Aliens were dancing in my head when I picked up this game. Piloting the analogous vehicles in the game did not deliver the experience I expected from the movie. But, to be fair, this game is not supposed to be based on the the movie, so I won't count that against the score. Here's how I got to 3 stars:

+5 Stars for originality: There's no other game that delivers the whole battlefield experience in first-person viewpoint like this one. It's cool to switch from flying to driving to gunnery as part of a mission thread. There are some nice touches like spotting for high-altitude bombardment and dam-busting missions that show the designers put some thought into what battles should be like in the future.

-1.5 Stars for the [bad] handling of all the vehicles: Sure, dropships are huge, lumbering machines that should not zip around like F-16's. Sure, you shouldn't be able to sling an APC around into a bootlegger reverse the way you would in Grand Theft Auto. All this may be "accurate", but it definitely makes for frustrating gameplay. The dropships turn so awkwardly that it's tough just to keep enemy planes in your field of view... much less try to keep the targeting reticle on them for a lock-on. The APCs skid out and crash into things at the drop of a hat. It's as if someone set out to make the perfect simulation of trying to park a minivan in the mall parking lot on a crowded day: you might admire the way [bad]turn radius and screaming kids in the back are "accurately" modeled, but you probably won't want to play for very long.

-0.5 Stars for making it so damn hard to land on a drop zone. This is the central concept of the game, right? Pilot your ship over the landing zone and zip down to release or extract troops? There's a twist: your ship has to be facing in the right direction when it lands. This is indicated by an arrow on the ground inside the blue circle of the drop zone. OK. What's the problem, you say? That arrow is not displayed on your radar, so you can't figure out the orientation until you have a visual on the zone AND the camera angles that the game provides during landing completely obscure your vision of the drop zone 90%of the time. Add to this the tendency of your dropship to skitter uncontrollably during fine maneuvers and you end up cursing a blue streak wrestling your ship to the ground while the drop timer counts down and enemy SAM placements pound you into dust.

So, if you really like the concept and can endure the awkward vehicle handling and cliched, stereotyped voice-acting, then this is a worthy addition to your PS2 library. I stopped having fun about 30% of the way through the missions and went back to playing Ace Combat 4 and GTA3 for my vehicular combat fixes.

An Excellent Combat Flight Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Look at the combat flight games on the PS2 and you'll find that most titles follow the tried and true formula. You take a fighter, whether airplane or spaceship, and place it in a beautiful environment and give the player a chance to blow things up. Well, this game is different, as part of the UPF's dropship force, you not only blow things up, you deliver them too... Imagine screaming over the ground at only 100m and speeding along at 1600kph. Your targetting system aquires locks on targets and you fire as you go, careful to avoid any mountains that get in the way. Then, as you come over a ridge, you see it, the LZ perhaps you're the one with the troops onboard, or maybe you're flying cover, eithe way, your in for a rough ride. This game puts you in control of a large aircraft, capable of taking off and landing vertically, you carry troops, evacuate vehicles, and fly cover for friendly units from air or ground attack. You even get to drive ground vehicles on some missions. Like the box says, if you want world peace, you need to fight for it."

The best flight sim on PS2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

There has always been one thing that has disappointed me about the PS2 is there were never many decent flight sims on it. But by luck I grabbed myself a copy of this totally engrossing game. I have been hearing about this game for a while now and now that it is here I am not disappointed. I am in the Army and these kind of games really get my blood going. I think that this game sports some of the best graphics on the PS2, Also the challenge level was up there with Thunderstrike. For people who know a little about battle field operations, this game sure lets you feel like you are really in the middle of a futuristic battle field. If only they could of let the player choose way points and aircraft types, but there is always number 2.

I should have played this sooner! Great flight combat sim!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: May 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Dropship: United Peace Force is a fantastic flight combat game that you should try and pick up cheap because it has been out for awhile now. The whole game is fast, competitive, has a steep learning curve with realistic battle sequences, amazing replay functions (cinematic), huge explosions, 20 tough missions, several Vertical Take-Off & Landing (VTL) vehicles, 10 ground assault vehicles (you also play on the ground sometimes driving tanks and other army vehicles), helicopters, 4 different country landscapes (5 missions per level), a coherent plot, futuristic weapons, sky combat, sea combat, land combat and a solid flight interface.

The essence of the game is to drop tanks and vehicles at designated waypoints and then fly around the place targeting the enemy and dog fighting in the sky. Your VTLs range anywhere from full size bombers to light fighter jets for scramble defense. The whole game is set slightly in the future so all the gadgets and planes look really stealthy and sleek.

The actual game play itself is amazing with hyper-realistic controls and a very well done environment. Graphics have got better since this was released on the PS2 but still the game is one of the most enjoyable flight combat games out there and is worth every single penny except for one dismal feature!......

THE IS NO FREE FLIGHT OR MULTIPLAYER MODE!

This brings the game down a star. It would have been simple to do a free flight frag em up or at least a multiplayer dog fight or co-op mode, but no they simply did not give us any at all which is a big shame since the game play was awesome.

4 BIG STARS minus 1 for missing the basics of what a packaged game like this needs. The 20 missions however have a lot of replay value.

Bring on Dropship 2 please soon!

This game rocks!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I first played this game when I was vacationing in Europe and saw a demo in an electronics store in London. This game was just too cool. Nice graphics and nonstop exciting gameplay. I'm glad its finally arrived here in the U.S. No need to buy the import version. This one is a true port from the Euro version.

Why Didn't I Buy This Game Sooner?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: December 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been so hooked on this game since I started playing it. I liked Ace Combat 4, but I LOVE this game. Not only do you pilot drop ships, but fighters and land vehicles too. You even get to take a break from flying and driving from time to time to man weapons turrets in the air and on the ground!
The early missions start you out slow, with little or no weaponry. They are a little dull, but they teach you some great piloting skills, so what the heck. No two missions are anything alike. The best thing about this game is that your wingmen AI actually HELP! In some scenarios you can even direct them at specific targets. Another neat feature is that you can view a replay of an entire scenario. I think one of the longest ones was over fourteen minutes. It's the perfect thing when you need to take a break, and you can usually see where those heinous missiles directed at you are coming from! I've seen the friendly AI taking out enemies that were on my tail.
If you like flying games such as Ace Combat, this game is for you. After some flying lessons, you won't be able to put it down.

Interesting Level of Depth

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

With most console-based flight games, control schemes are often simplified for the sake of ease. This is not the cade in Dropship, yet it does not damage the gameplay. It feels, in fact, like the controller was built to control the dropship. It's refreshing not to have the simple arcade control. There's nothing like putting the dropship into hover and firing as you descend to the LZ to drop a tank onto the battlefield.

Fun, intriguing combat flight-sim

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: June 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I picked this game up on a whim, just thinking it was just another type of combat flight-sim. I was surprised to see how fun and different this game is from other types of flight-sim games. YOu just don't fly and hover a dropship during combat missions, but you also get to try ground missions from dropping off infantry units to providing close-air-support for friendly ground units.

This game is like a mix of Ace Combat 4 and Halo. It's not great like those two games, but good enough to warrant a buy rating from this gamer.

cool game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 14
Date: June 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

good good game almost like Metal Gear: Solid good graphics with good game play

Hover-Hippo

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It's not the worst combat flight sim out there, or the best. The missions have a nice logic to them and learning to control your dropship properly takes practice- she's a slippery hippo. The maps are large and have a good sense of scale.

That being said, the graphics are unpolished and ugly, which creates a BIG problem for a flight sim, in that it's hard to gauge distance because the terrain textures are uniformly flat and boring.

The audio is surpisingly good. The com chatter and background music are exceptional.

If the developers had had another few months to touch this game up it might've been an excellent outing. As it is, strategy minded flight-sim enthusiasts only need apply.

This is not a game you want to spend over 10 dollars for, in my opinion.

Review Page: 1 

Actions