When it comes to most Warhammer titles, you’ll find yourself filling the boots of some high-ranking Commander, moving forces around a battlefield or an armour-clad Ultramarine bringing the hurt to endless heretics. Though every so often a game will give you a taste of what its like on the other side of things. Titles like Shootas, Blood & Teef and Armageddon – Da Orks let you fulfil your Ork dreams. Chicago based Phosphor Game Studios have just released another title that lets you see the Warhammer universe though a very different lens, as Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition sees you taking to the skies as an Ork Flyboy. Before we get started… it’s worth highlighting that this is a port of a mobile title, which is a HUGE factor that really impacts the overall package and worth bearing in mind, especially when we get to the issues the game has.
Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition is a fast-paced, arcade fuelled aerial shooter where you are tasked with doing what Ork’s do best… smashing, destroying and having unquestionable aerial superiority. There is a fun and for the most part well written tale at its core that has a surprising amount of Warhammer lore in the mix. You start out as a new recruit to the Flyboys, who has his sights set on being a Warboss, through completing ever more challenging missions your general gives you. Missions that will see you flying over a number of alien worlds, while fighting a number of the different Warhammer factions. Though there is a lack of variety in the mission structure. Mostly it’s just asking you to kill x-number of planes or turrets and then rinse and repeat. There are a handful of escort missions, but these often end up with you hunting down enemy planes instead of having to hold your ground and defend.
You’ll get to fly series icons like the Dakkajets, Burna-Bommas, and Blitza-Bommas, all equipped with an array of guns, bombs, and missiles. Each “aircraft” can be customed to your own taste and style as well, though its mobile past haunts it a bit as upgrades cost way too much and feel like a hangover from a pay to win model. Visually for a mobile port its epically rough even by Switch standards, with extremely heavy pixelation and low-resolution textures across the board, as well as low detailed models and environments. But oddly the game drops frames faster than you can drop bombs, as it struggled to keep to 30 fps more than a few times I noticed. There are more issues on performance front as well, with loading times feeling, very long especially when starting the game. The camera system in game is also really hit and miss too, as it zooms in and out non-stop and isn’t fixed making flying overly clunky at times. Then there are a number of bugs I found, like hitting or getting stuck on invisible objects, as well as the overall AI bit just… thick to be blunt. Though the developers are patching the game to try and save it, but you know what they say about polishing a turd… you get shit all over the place.
Credit where credit is due though as the audio as beyond the heavy metal fuelled soundtrack, the voice acting is very good. Each Ork sounds the part from grunting veterans to squeaky engineers, though in-game the same 3 or 4 lines will start to grate after about 4 seconds. Warhammer 40000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition is so rough you’ll feel like you need a tetanus after only a few minutes of play. Poorly optimized for the Switch, it could have been a blast as it lets you see a new area of the Warhammer universe. Instead, you’ll feel like you flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit.
A Switch review copy of Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition was provided by Phosphor Games’ PR team, and it’s out now for a price that probably isn’t worth paying on Switch, PC, PlayStation, Xbox and mobile.
The Verdict
Stuart Cullen
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