Dogfight 2 - Time Waster
Ever since my Commodore 64 gaming days, my two favorite genres of games were racing games, and air combat games. The best sub-genre of air combat games are dogfighting games, where you are pitted against other similarly capable planes, and must shoot them down.
Dogfight 2 is a very simple, but fun and remarkably pretty side-scrolling air combat game. The control system is dead simple - you can rotate the plane left or right on the screen using your arrow keys to pitch it up to climb, or down to dive. The other two buttons are the spacebar to shoot, and either CTRL or ALT to drop a limited number of bombs per level.
The level design in Dogfight 2 is well done, ramping up the difficulty fast but reasonably. You have 5 lives, but each time you clear 5 levels you can pick up from that point forward - so far I've only ever gotten to level 14, but I'm able now to start from level 11.
One unique aspect of the gameplay in Dogfight 2 are a set of 4 maneuvers you can perform to momentarily confuse your enemies. Flying through a cloud, loops, flying low to the ground, and a death-defying dive down to a low level will all cause confusion and delay amongst your enemies. Missions involve shooting down enemy planes, airships, and bombing ground installations, which keeps the game interesting level-to-level.
Dogfight 2 is quick to learn, and offers a surprising level of replay value for a free online game. If this genre of game interests you, I highly recommend this one.
