Flight Sims

[The-Ice-Man]

Who else likes flight sims? I felt like getting some use out of my joystick lately, (My Logitech stick, not my penis) so I bought a few flight sims I haven't tried. I bought Lock-On: Modern Air Combat, IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, Blazing Angels 1 & 2, Heroes of the Pacific, and H.A.W.X. Angels, Heroes and H.A.W.X are arcade style shooters, whereas Sturmovik and Lock-On are realistic sims. I like to play both the arcade type ones and the realistic ones. Games like Blazing Angels stroke your pilot ego, letting you down a hundred enemy planes doing loops and barrel rolls all the way with great ease. Then you play something like Sturmovik and you find you can't even get a plane off the ground without smashing it to pieces.

 

Until now I hadn't tried a realistic WW2 plane sim, and I've found out through playing Sturmovik that flying old planes is really hard. If you can get them off the ground it's a bitch to keep them in the air. You're constantly fighting wind and turbulance that wants to pull you into a spin and make you crash to the ground. I've played a few missions and I've actually yet to down an enemy plane. I've downed myself plenty of times though. Flying WW2 planes is crazy hard. Sturmovik is supposedly the most realistic WW2 combat sim available, and if it is accurate, I don't know how real WW2 pilots did it. I haven't tried Lock-On yet but I expect it to be very simlar to Falcon 4.0, which is the most realistic modern plane sim I've played to date. It may be a lot more complicated in terms of all the buttons and switches, but modern jet planes are so much easier to fly.

 

Then there are space sims. I haven't tried many but I love X-Wing: Alliance. Don't need to worry about take off and landing there, just Tie Fighters.

 

So who else likes wiggling their stick in front of their PC?

[Agozer]

It's been ages since I've played a slight-sim of any kind, and quite frankly, I find them boring unless it's something akin to Sky Odyssey or Ace Combat.

[The-Ice-Man]

Yeah, I think the Ace Combat series are probably the best console born aerial combat games.

[Diso]

I've been wanting another good flight sim granted today's flight sims remove the element of taking off and landing (HAWX) which is fine by me. HAWX was alright, played it coop with 2 other guys and we found out you could restock missiles easily by crashing into the ground and respawning. Oh well. Last good flight sim out there that I played was freelancer.

 

IMO, they probably have to do a hybrid with an FPS in order to make it into the market. Where it's like fly around, get shot down, steal someone's plane, and fly out while evading enemies. Or something like that.

[The-Ice-Man]

I really like H.A.W.X. I didn't go in expecting a realistic flight sim like some people did, so I was more than pleased with it. Certainly the best looking one on PC to date. Blazing Angels 1 & 2 are ok, 2 is slightly better. I want to try Wings of Prey, which is a sequel to IL2 Sturmovik, with much better graphics, but it's not available to buy retail, so I'm slowly downloading a copy over emule. Also interested to see what Storm of War is like when it's finished, which is another one being made by Ogel Maddox who made Sturmovik. I still can't land in Sturmovik though, I always end up ripping my landing gear off as I hit the ground. I'd like to see them make a Crimson Skies 3, that would be good if it was like you're describing. Mace Griffin was sort of like that. First person shooter until you walk into your ship and take off into a sort of space sim.