Microsoft Game Studios and Revo Solutions Games is offering Rise of Glory, a World War I air combat game for Windows Phone 7. The game puts you in the cockpit of World War I era fighting planes where you can fight your way through a single player campaign or battle through user defined missions.
Flight controls takes full advantage of your Windows Phones sensors and the game is presented with high graphic quality. Rise of Glory is also integrated with Xbox Live to allow you to share achievements and scores with your online friends. The only downside to the Xbox integration is that there isn't a multi-player mode available.
To read more on Rise of Glory, fly on past the break.
Flight Controls
Rise of Glory utilizes your Windows Phone's touch screen and accelerometer to control the aircraft. Tilting the phone left or right steers the plane in that direction. Tilt the phone up or down and the plane responds accordingly.
Touch screen controls are present to control the planes rudder, engine and weapons.
Engine controls are used to start the plane as well as accelerate or slow down the plane. If un-touched, the aircraft will fly at an average speed.
The flight simulator aspect of Rise of Glory is challenging but not too challenging to make game play frustrating. The game incorporates flight real world flight conditions (e.g. climb too fast and the engine stalls) and I often found myself leaning one way or another mimicking my planes flight direction. You do have an air speed indicator but no altimeter. It would be nice to have known your altitude but then again, did World War I fighter planes have altimeters?
Game Play
You have two game modes with Rise of Glory, campaign and custom game.
The custom game lets you choose your plane, mission and game mode (free for all, team death match, defend the base and capture the flag). Custom games are a great way to get into the action quickly.
The campaign is a twelve chapter, goal oriented, storyline that has you piloting a wide variety of planes on various missions. You start on the Farm where you learn your way around the single engine plane. From there you go on to harder missions where you take on enemy planes, ground forces and even a little aerial surveillance.
In either game mode, Rise of Glory was fun to play. The missions weren't impossible and I found the greatest challenge was controlling the plane. Graphically, there are no complaints with Rise of Glory. From the details on the plane to the flight environment, Microsoft and Revo has done a very good job of it.
Overall Impression
If you like flight simulators or old school, air combat games, Rise of Glory will make your short list. If you want a fast paced, action game make sure you download Rise of Glory's trial version.
And that might be my only complaint on this really good Windows Phone game. The pace of play can be a little on the slow side. It's just the nature of the beast and adds to the realism of Rise of Glory. Single engine planes simply don't travel from Point A to Point B as fast as modern jets.
Once your in the thick of things, Rise of Glory holds it own rather nicely but it's the in between stages that you begin to wish for a fast forward button. Graphically, the game is very well done. It ran stable with no bugs, glitches or crashes (with respect to the application).
All in all, I liked Rise of Glory. While the game pace of the campaign can have its slack periods, the custom games drop you immediately into the middle of the action. The flight controls have a realistic feel to them and don't be surprised if you catch yourself leaning with the plane's movements.
There is a trial version of Rise of Glory available to let you try before you buy. The full copy will run you $2.99. Rise of Glory can be found here (opens your Zune browser) at the Marketplace.
