Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron

Genre: Combat Flight Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Included in Action Games Bundle, along with Deflector and Syndrome.)

The Warhammer 40,000 franchise has proven to be a property ripe for videogame adaptations. Not only is its cynical fantasy/sci-fi setting still wildly unique even to this day, but the property’s license-holders have seen fit to farm it out to countless developers who each seem to have their own take on it. Given the game’s tabletop origins, Strategy and RPG games are both obvious candidates for the property to dive into, and the violent futuristic setting makes First-Person Shooters and vaguely military-style Action games a solid choice too. However Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron (sometimes subtitled Flyboyz Edition) aims in a different direction, being a game about orcs flying fighting aircraft.

Released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, Dakka Squadron situates itself on the “doesn’t take itself too seriously” side of the Warhammer 40K property, with the orcs’ warlike nature and their “death is cheap” sentiment, making for an overall tone where your comrades thrill in the death and destruction being wreaked, and never seem too torn up about it when one of their own dies (yourself included).

Much of this tone is conveyed with some solid voice acting that really gives the player a solid feel of the sort of bloodthirsty but ramshackle outfit they find themselves in. This is further emphasized with the game’s solid heavy metal soundtrack.

The rest of the presentation is somewhat less impressive. To the game’s credit, the game’s aircraft and environments seem to have a good amount of detail, at least when you get up close enough to them to see. Unfortunately, the performance of this game on Nintendo Switch renders all of that moot.

Dakka Squadron looks absolutely terrible on Nintendo Switch. The game has a horribly low resolution making everything appear as if it’s smeared with Vaseline, rendering it hard to see the aforementioned details. Even worse, this game suffers frequent and nasty frame drops, something that absolutely hinders the game’s fast-paced combat. And worst of all, this version of the game floods the world with a nasty fog that makes everything look like you’re viewing it through a tinted lens depending on what planet you’re on. The first planet, as an example, is an orangish-red, and this game so floods the screen with that color that before long I felt the need to rest my eyes. And despite these technical issues, this game takes up a massive 8.7GB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s memory.

If you can ignore the technical issues, Dakka Squadron does have some interesting features. You’re generally flying freely around an enclosed area on a planet, restricted from flying too high. Depending on the mission, you’ll be taking out enemies, taking out enemies while protecting a ship you’re escorting, taking out enemies while trying to cripple a fortified enemy position… you get the idea.

Players can fly in any direction (even going in full loops), fire a machine gun, lock onto enemies to help you keep track of your quarry, and there’s even a move to bash into an enemy that’s flying in close proximity to your aircraft. This last move makes for an interesting twist, as combat flight sims don’t often have melee moves. Of course, unfortunately, with the visuals being so bad, you’ll likely be looking at targeting reticules more than the enemies, as those are at least usually clear. And it’s not just the presentation that’s flawed here – turning in this game feels extremely clunky and unnatural.

In the end, I get the feeling that on PC, Dakka Squadron was a decent but mostly fairly standard Combat Flight Simulator. Unfortunately, this game’s positive qualities are far overshadowed by its negatives on Nintendo Switch, with absolutely atrocious performance issues. If you love this universe, do yourself a favor and get the PC version of this game, but if possible you should give the Nintendo Switch version a wide berth as it crashes and burns.

tl;dr – Dakka Squadron is a Combat Flight Simulator that has you fighting battles as an orc in an armed aircraft. The gameplay here is mostly decent, and even has a few unique features, but this game just falls flat on its face on Nintendo Switch due to some absolutely severe performance issues. Fans of this franchise or this genre may want to check this game out on PC, but skip the Nintendo Switch version.

Grade: C-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Port/Remake, The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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