Until the Last Plane Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Until the Last Plane (Xbox One)

Thursday, January 26, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to manage an airport base back in World War II era? Wonder no longer, as Until the Last Plane does just that, having you manage your pilots, aircraft, base, repairs, and even making sure you have enough fuel, parts, ammunition and bombs on hand for your important missions against the enemy. From solo developer CarloC Games, Until the Last Plane’s screenshots may have you think that there’s some shooting mechanics involved, but that’s not the case at all here really.

Air strikes obviously played an integral part of World War II across numerous theaters of war, and with Until the Last Plane, you’ll get to play a part in their hopefull successes in battle. Not only were the pilots brave for dogfighting and going behind enemy lines, but there was a crew of engineers and many others that often get forgotten, keeping their planes in tip-top shape and ready for the next assault.

You’re tasked with managing an airfield base. This is more than simply telling which pilots to attack certain targets, but making sure you keep and gather resources, keeping morale of your crew up, ordering spare parts, fuel and more. You’ll begin by choosing which faction you want to play as from USA, USSR and Germany, and then choose which of the 3 missions you want to attempt, each corresponding with a different difficulty. Successfully complete missions and you’ll move onto the next day as well as gain resources, experience for your pilots, skill points and more.

So with 3 factions and 3 missions each, you have 9 total levels to try and complete. Each mission though varies from their objectives and how many days each of them last, becoming increasingly challenging the more days you need to balance your resources and survive for. To successfully pass each day you must complete at least one mission, and these will vary. Failure to do so or having all your pilots perish in combat will abruptly return you to the main screen for you to start all over again.

Manage to complete a mission and you’ll earn a medal and some skill points to improve different aspects. Complete more missions in a day and you’ll earn more medals and rewards. Even though the core gameplay is simple and there’s a tutorial from the main menu you can partake in, there’s still a lot that really wasn’t explained well, namely the strategy of what to do and when. The best ways to manage your airbase is somewhat explained, but until an hour or two in I didn’t really understand it and how to balance my resources well. This caused for a lot of trial and error, but once you figure out the smaller details and some strategies for managing your airfield, it becomes much simpler.

With three different factions I actually expected the only real differences to be aesthetic, but there’s actually a bit of a difference of how you play each. While each nation has different planes, obviously, each of the campaigns do play different simply from how they earn their resources. For example, completing missions for USA earns you cash which you can then spend on purchasing more resources as you see fit. USSR though does it quite differently, as completing missions earns you political favor, which certain resources will be sent to you automatically as a reward. These subtle differences do require different strategies, though not difficult to figure out best practices with a few attempts. They vary enough to be unique from one another and each have their own small narratives.

You’re constantly racing against the clock, as once 18:30 rolls around, the day is over and your pilot must return, unable to start any more missions. As long as you have one mission type complete before then you’re going to move onto the next day of the 4-7 day mission. Could you complete one mission then simply wait for the other half of the day to pass by until the day ends, sure, but then you’ll lose out on resources from additional successful missions, so there’s a balance of using fuel and ammo to get more fuel, ammo and skill points.

To begin, you first must do some reconnaissance, finding out what targets and threats are nearby. This is done via a quick minigame starting with choosing how much fuel you want to spend. The more fuel the longer distance and more targets (missions) you can potentially spot, up to three, but the longer in the air the more potential for danger from enemy fighters. This minigame is quick, having you choose to move forward and simply pressing ‘A’ when your camera is over a shadow of a target below, adding them to your list of available missions for that day.

These missions will vary from bombing runs, dogfights and more, but more on those shortly. Surprisingly, you don’t really control or fly your planes as you might expect, rather simply giving them commands or aiming up the bombing reticules in these minigames instead. As pilots return to base they will park in designated repair zones where you’ll need to send your engineers to repair, refill fuel, restock ammunition and bombs. You only have a certain amount of workers though, so if you have all your pilots returning at once, you’ll have a backlog of planes waiting to be serviced as they come in together.

You’ll not only need to keep morale of your pilots and crew high, but doing what you can to keep them alive. If a pilot crashes and burns, clearly morale at the base will take a big hit. Between days of each campaign you might be making decisions based on situations you find yourself in or maybe someone asking for help. These could have positive or negative outcomes, so maybe think twice before lending out some of your engineers.

At its core, you’re simply playing a management sim and figuring out the most ideal way to spend and save your resources. Fuel and ammo will be your most used, needing constant resupply to your aircraft, but it’s all about making sure you have enough of everything on hand so you can continue on for more missions and onto the next day of the stage.

The different mission types simply vary in quick different styles of minigames. You need to send at least one pilot on a mission, but can send up to as many that are in your crew if you wish. Sending a half dozen will surely give you more chances at being successful, but then you’ll also be spending that much more fuel and ammunition, so there’s a balance of your needs versus skill at being successful.

After you’ve done your reconnaissance and have anywhere from one to three missions to choose from, you’ll then have a set amount of time to be successful with the objectives laid out before you, usually tasked with shooting down one or a few enemy planes or bombing some targets. The dogfights aren’t a typical shooter like you’d expect, instead giving you three different maneuvers you can tell your pilot to do, moving you forward, left or right, and once all the set moves from you and your enemy are used up in turn based succession, if the enemy is within your cone of firing, you’ll be successful, or else they will escape. If you take enemy fire in return, then your pilot will come back to the base for repairs.

The easiest missions are the bombing runs, and these are simplistic as it comes. As your plane flies forward, you simply need to lock in the aiming reticule cursors for the horizontal and vertical placement. These lines move quickly at first, so you need to lock in on your target, without much room for error. This becomes much easier with some practice, and certain skill points will slow down these line movements as well if you focus on these missions.

Because there are different plane types, some are better suited for different types of missions. The smaller planes are more agile, better used in dogfights and giving you more moves to use, whereas the larger bomber planes can hold up to 3 bombs instead of just 1 in the smaller aircraft, so there’s some strategy when choosing which pilots to send on mission types. There is an automatic combat option for you once you choose your pilots which certainly cuts down on the monotony, but there’s no success percentage shown, so you might send your best pilots and be completely unsuccessful, so it’s generally better to just repeat the same minigames over and over to ensure your success.

The issue with these missions is that they are very basic and repeated over and over. Once you figure out the best strategies to win, shoot down enemies or evade them, it becomes quite simple to always win. When pilots arrive back at the base you can choose to refill their supplies, fuel and more, but you don’t always have to. The more refilling the more resources you use and the longer it takes to do so. This is also dependent on how many technicians you have available as well, so there’s a constant balance game you need to play.

Not explained well is the upgrades you can craft for your planes. You have spare parts, another resource, so do you decide to save some on hand for repairs or spend them frivolously on upgrades for your planes to be more successful in future missions? This is where some strategy and knowing your own skills comes into play, as I knew if I chose bombing missions, those were always guaranteed wins per battle.

Created by a solo developer, the pixel graphics are done quite well, looking like an older game from my childhood. The sprites are done well and you can clearly see the distinction between the different factions and aircraft. The soundtrack is passable, as is the ‘pew pew’ from the gunfire and bomb drops, but there’s really not much else of note. There are a few voiced lines from the pilots, but these will grate on you quite quickly hearing the same lines over and over since you play these minigames dozens of times repeatedly. I was impressed that they are voiced in your chosen faction’s language, it’s just a shame they were constantly overused.

Until the Last Plane can be addictive in short bursts once you figure out its intricacies and best strategies, but there’s a lot of repetitiveness. Even with a few different mission types and objectives, you’re just constantly doing the same menu options repeatedly. The $12.79 (CAD) price does seem a little high given the lack of leaderboards, and while it does feel a bit underwhelming, it’s easy to complete on autopilot once you have the best strategies figured out.

**Until the Last Plane was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 5.8 / 10
Gameplay: 6.0 / 10
Visuals: 6.5 / 10
Sound: 5.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Until the Last Plane (Xbox One)

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