In the ancient times a powerful and highly developed nation occupied the area of today's Perm province. The state's educated inhabitants and their wealth were one of the first obstacles of the long Hesperian wars. Remains of the original Permesian industry are still the most important part of the Hesperian empire. In Permesian province there is a society called Hammercraft. Its members keep and protect the ancient knowledge of this area. With this knowledge Hammercraft engineers can design huge airships that Hammercraft pilots use in air fights. Hammercraft ships are huge structures made of iron and wood. The balloon part sonsists of one or more voluminous light gas tanks. Under the tanks there is a cockpit. The propeller, the wings and the rudder are mounted to the cockpit. The armour plates of the ship are so thick and heavy that you could wonder how this piles of iron can fly at all. Well, they can, but their flight is slow and clumsy. Hammercraft airships can carry the heaviest weapons that are used in the league matches. The weapons are attached to a rotating arm under the cockpit. This allows for fast aiming and firing without the need to change the flight direction or altitude.

The most important qualities:

• slow speed and maneuvering

• fast rotating weapon independent on the ship itself

• heavy armour plates

Each clan has different attributes as you can see, some may seem easier to control than others - while certain clans have been defences and are resistant to certain weapons...Quite a cool aspect to the game.

The interface is also similar to popular first person shooters on the market today, Flying Heroes is very similar to that of Unreal Tournament. Along the top of the screen is information on mission progress, such as your position in the a tournament, number of cannons destroyed etc, there is also information on time limit in tournaments and tag time in multiplayer games. Finally along the top of the screen is a small area that gives out information on who fragged who during the game. In the center of the screen is the main frag arena consisting of information on opponents names and their position on the screen. Finally along the bottom of the screen shows health points, manna points and temporary effect icons such as fire boost, invisibility etc. In the right corner there is information about the quantity of ammunition that you currently have as well as objects you hold and the current active weapon. Early weapons in the game range from the very dull Spark gun to the icicle cannon. Weapons are bought with the money you get from each tournament match (You get money for frags etc), but you can also spend it on upgrades to you ship/creature as well as other things.

As mentioned earlier, you can pick up a number of add-ons during the game - some act as weapons such as the "Metal Star" which you fire and then guide towards you enemy yourself, very cool.

Multiplayer

For the first time ever when reviewing a game - Both Alex and I went online to start playing Flying Heroes multiplayer side of the game, but to our amazement - there were absolutely no other players online, not one even after waiting for about 30 minutes for the last couple of days. Not a good start for a game with a large multiplayer aspect to it. The game includes support for Heat multiplayer games - but not even the Flying Heroes website area on Heat wasn't working which leaves me wondering why no simple internet hookup like in Quake 3/Unreal Tournament wasn't used. If anyone else has the game and would like to try a TCP/IP game then just e-mail me and I'll update this part of the review. So if you would like to know more about the multiplayer side of the game, please check the links below.

• Death-match / Frag-limit

• Team death-match / Team Frag-limit

• Tag

• Domination

• Capture the Flag

Graphics and Sound

It might just be me, but I have heard everyone who has previously previewed the game rave about the graphics in Flying Heroes - while some levels have some great scenery, the majority isn't anything to write home about in my opinion, but in saying that - even in 1024x768x32 the game flew along nice and fast even on my PC. One part I was impressed with was the designs for all of the ships and creatures etc, they are original and like nothing you have seen before such as flying teapots (Yes, I mean it) to a pram. Some of the weapon effects are also pretty good too, along with fire effects and waterfalls/snow - but I found that some of the in-game levels were a little dull, if very colorful and fogging could sometimes be a problem.

Sound wise it is again a mixed bag, some of it is excellent such as weapon sounds and squawking of birds that some clans fly while other parts like the voice-overs just don't seem to go with the game quite as well. The music side is pretty good - especially on the main menu, in the game though it seems like it was taken directly from Unreal Tournament again.

Final Comments

How It Grades
		Originality: 84% Gameplay: 88% Story: 70% Graphics: 86% Cutscenes: 82% Sound: 87% Music: 88% Manual: 80% Interface: 75% Multiplayer: N/A Overall: 87%

Original and fun in many ways, but also frustrating in others. If you keep at it then you could well learn to love the game, I have certainly started to enjoy it the more I play it and each time I find something new I didn't see before. It has a lot of good aspects to it in the single player game - more so than both Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and actually manages to feel like you are playing it online even when you are not. The main problem I had with Flying Heroes was the controls, it isn't easy to control the ship/creature you are flying - especially as a beginner and I felt that could have been improved on. Flying Heroes manages to capture a good online feel for the single player and it really grows on you the more you play.

Specs & Package
Overall Score	87%
Version Reviewed	UK Version (Gold)
Release Date	Out Now
In The Box?	1 CD 1 Manual
The Good Points	Good cutscenes Original Lot of vehicles and weapons Some great scenery Ability to upgrade ships and weapons
The Bad Points	Feels slow sometimes Hard to turn Have to play on "Heat" if you want internet play
Similar To	Unreal Tournament Magic Carpet
Reviewers PC Setup	Pentium II 450 Windows 98 Second Edition 128 Meg SD-Ram Matrox G400 32MB AGP Graphics Card DirectX 7a SoundBlaster Live! Value 17" LG Electronics Monitor Microsoft Force Feedback Pro Microsoft Game Pad Pro (USB) Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer DVD TV Player - Pioneer DV-626D Widescreen TV - Sony KV-28WS2U 28" DVD-ROM: Toshiba SD-1202
PC Required	Windows 95/98 Pentium 166 mmx 64 mb ram Mouse and Keyboard 3D video card with 4mb ram Windows compatible sound device 3 mb free hard drive space