Ever since the PlayStation redefined videogames and established its huge installed base, more and more companies are content to shovel out mediocre (at best) software. Such is the case with Sammys latest offering, Lethal Skies. What irks me most however is you can tell developer Asmik Ace seemed satisfied to settle with a weak (and at times pathetic) effort to make even a decent game. In this generation of gaming, this type of commitment just isnt going to cut it anymore.

The graphics in Lethal Skies are probably its strongest aspect, but that of course doesnt mean theyre good. Typical generic environments, low-res muddy textures, and average to poor effects run rampant throughout the games missions. The aircrafts you pilot sport half decent detail, but not even close to the standard set by other PS2 flight sims. Same goes for the structures in the game; all of which would have greatly benefited from more detailed textures. The game does run smoothly with no real slowdown, yet that might be due to the fact that the environments are half the size of other PS2 flight sims. Bottom line is this game isnt all that pretty.

The play of Lethal Skies is really good though. Of course by really good I mean painfully bad. This was the aspect of the game that totally killed it for me; the game is simply not that fun. Skies suffers from some really terrible mission balancing and variety. Pretty much every mission simply asks you to blow said objectives to bits. I wont even get into the story, which I think the designers children must have scribbled out in about 10 minutes. Not to mention wherein some missions are just stupidly hard, others (the majority) are so laughably easy they take less than a minute to finish (yes one freakin minute). I dont know about you, but sitting through a 2 minute briefing and a 20 second loading screen to blow through a 45 second mission is my idea of fun (that has to scream sarcasm). The worst part though is the control, which accounts for nearly all of the games difficulty. More often than not you end up flying into the ground rather than blowing stuff up because of it. Although Asmik Ace skewed towards realism, I never felt like I was flying a high-tech jet. When your speed gets low, you can kiss your handling goodbye. During the token fly through a canyon missions, this can seriously frustrate even the most skilled pilot. On the good side you can fly any of the 13 available (assuming theyre all unlocked) craft for any mission, and they do all have different statistics in specific areas (control, stealth etc.). The differences between each however are minimal at best, and these stats never really seemed to matter. Oh well.

In terms of sound Skies barely approaches average, however it is a step above awful, albeit a small step. The sound effects are capable and are the games best aural aspect, but they dont really impress overall. The voice acting (what little there is) during flying is muffled for realism, but its muffled so much you can barely hear your wingmen. The voice during the briefings is fine, but it seems a bit as if youre commander is getting bored (save the world? uhn). As for the music well lets just say its terribly pathetic and doesnt even fit in with the game. Frankly, anyone who plays Skies should just plain turn it off. Actually its so freakin ba-! Thats enough actually, I dont want to be harsh.

Because of the previously mentioned minute missions, Lethal Skies doesnt really offer much value either. The campaign mode offers the normal amount of missions, but most are so short the average player will finish them all in less than 2 hours. There is a dogfighting mode in which you can test your skills in many of the games environments, but that gets dry real quick. Dont expect to get even close to 10 hours out of this game. Nuff said.

With games like Ace Combat 4, Dropship and even Top Gun available for the PS2, there is no reason why anyone should bother with Lethal Skies. While its not terribly awful, this is the kind of mediocre drivel I hope in the future more companies will spare us from. Dont even bother renting this one. Uhn