Dakka Squadron Switch Review
As regular viewers may know, there are 2 things I’m rather fond of and that’s Warhammer games and aviation. Dakka Squadron combines these two things in a formula that would be hard to mess up. So when it was announced that Dakka Squadron was coming to Switch, I decided to postpone sinking into Unicorn Overlord for a bit to take to the skies… and you know what, that’s on me. What’s Dakka Squadron Like? Load the whole nine yards, prep those countermeasures, and do your pre-flight checks as we review Warhammer 40k Dakka Squadron for the Nintendo Switch.
The story plays out that you are an Ork, enlisting to be a flyboy with the ultimate goal of becoming a warboss. Most exposition is told by a 2D cutout of your general and the voice acting is rather good and the dialogue is well written. You will complete missions to progress to new planets with varied biomes and fight all manner of factions in the Warhammer 40k Universe. Along the way, you will be able to change and upgrade your fighter by adding more weapons and features, as well as paint it to give it some of your personal flair.
A Warhammer Game with Top Gun vibes seems like a winning combination, especially when it’s focused on one of the more…outlandish species in the Warhammer Universe, unfortunately, right from when you load it up and are greeted with heavily pixelated studio logos, it’s like you have a missile lock and it’s time to get ready to punch out. There’s a lengthy load into the menu screen, and there’s even a loading screen to load the loading screen when getting into missions. The menu is navigated by moving a slow-moving cursor over text that is far too small and pixelated to be legible for anyone with less than 20/20 vision. It seems like it’s a hastily slapped-together package with minimal to no care or thought put into it.
Things continue to fall apart faster than a hastily bolted-together Dakka when flying into the gameplay. Graphically, the game runs at an incredibly low resolution featuring some of the worst pixelation I have seen grace the screens of the Nintendo and I’m so confused because it still struggles to maintain a 30 frames per second cap despite looking like something out of the Nintendo 64 era. The texture resolutions are horrendous, models are low detailed, and environments are dull and devoid of much detail at all, and the special effects like explosions are a muddled mess. The developer has said a patch is underway to improve visual fidelity, but from what I’ve seen from the new patch footage, it’s not going to fix the core of the problems and mainly offers a minor anti-aliasing boost to smooth out some of the rougher edges. I hoped that a newer environment would breathe some life into the game but that somehow managed to make the game look and perform even worse, shuttering the framerate despite the jagged and low-detailed models of the surroundings.
The flight model of the game handles poorly, and for some reason, the camera lurches forward with every move you make, zooming in and out constantly instead of staying in a fixed position, this is absent in the PC version. I understand this is no Microsoft Flight Sim, but instead of adopting smooth arcade flying like Rogue Squadron or Lylat Wars, it is a clunky affair that makes it hard to enjoy. You can do instant air U-turns which violently snap the camera in another direction, or clumsily barrel roll despite there being almost no real reason to do so. There are also a lot of bugs such as getting caught on invisible objects, or allied and enemy fighters bouncing up and down and getting stuck on force fields or level boundaries. Warning noises persist after finishing a mission if you happen to complete it on low health, and the game seems to have almost 0 polish or optimization for the Nintendo Switch architecture.
Mission structures don’t tend to alter too much, and usually consist of killing X amount of jets, destroying turrets, rinse, and repeating. There are some escort missions that don’t provide too much excitement as you tend to simply kill X amount of jets regardless. The biggest challenge for me in this game was fighting the awful flight controls and staying engaged with the terrible graphics and framerate.
The redeeming feature is the voice acting and exposition which is whacky and humorous and honors the lore and mannerisms of the Warhammer 40k Universe. This does tend to wear off when fighting in-game as the lines are heavily recycled but do stand out in between missions. For my vision-impaired Flyboys and Flygirls, there are no accessibility options, and I cannot recommend playing Dakka Squadron due to the muddled pixelated text, as well as the incredibly small text size. Even at $30 the value for money just doesn’t add up. There’s no multiplayer, and despite being able to play as different factions to go through the campaign, I think only the most die-hard fan would want to.
All of this is a shame since the PC version of Dakka Squadron seems to have an ok rating sitting at a firm 7/10, and is very positive on Steam, but as it stands, the Switch Version is heresy of the highest order. I know I’m not going to make many friends here with publishers or the PR Firms that distribute these games but frankly, Warhammer Dakka Squadron is not only an insult to Switch owners, but this port is an insult to the Warhammer License. It’s a lazy port that shouldn’t have been released in its current state, and I don’t think a “Day 1 or close enough to it” patch will solve many of the issues listed in this review. I’m so annoyed at spending $30 on this title, but hopefully, that means that you don’t have to make the same mistake I did. Dakka Squadron on Switch it seems, should definitely stay grounded.
