1942: Joint Strike remains a top down shooter. And you are, once again, flying a plane in the Pacific theatre shooting down wave after wave of enemy planes, ships and tanks. The rest is a major change from the original.
Joint Strike is in widescreen, which vastly expands the surface area you need to patrol, but also ends up shortening how far you can see/attack ahead of yourself. This is a pretty major change for a top-down shooter and gives gamers both more area to hide, but also more enemies filling up the screen. In single-player, this can sometimes lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed. But in two-player co-op -- the preferred play option for Joint Strike -- it helps keep you and your partner from overlapping and confusing one another.
Available in local play or online, co-op has you and a friend choosing from three different planes (each with different stats) and one of three unique Joint Strike powers. The Joint Strikes are special attacks that require you and your wingman to work together to maximize damage. The most popular, Chained Lightning, creates a bolt of lightning between you and your partner's planes. Anything that gets between your planes takes massive damage. Only by communicating and working as a team can you effectively guide both planes so enemies fly into their destructive path.
So what if you're playing solo? Ay, there's the rub. Rather than find a creative way to utilize the Joint Strikes in single-player, Capcom copped out and gave solo fliers a missile strike. Bo-ring! Sure, you can play and get a bit of a kick from 1942 in single-player, but this is clearly a game meant for two.
The problem there is that the online has proven spotty. My first two online games with Joint Strike ended due not to enemy fire, but massive bugs. One simply crashed the game, while the other dropped all textures and enemy renders from the screen. I've also had plenty of play-throughs that went fine (minus some serious slowdown in areas), but know that the netcode is far from perfect. That's a shame, because 1942 is only great when playing with a friend.
Though Capcom made some changes and improvements to 1942, it is ultimately still an arcade shooter. It's short. Really short. A half hour kind of short. The hope is that you will want to replay it again and again to get your high score on the board. Is a game with such little depth, no plane customization, and spotty online issues worth $10? Not really.