Wings of Prey

[Engels]

This is the PC version of a console WWII flight combat game that came out a bit ago called Birds of Prey. It seems to have a few more features than the original console port, but in essense, its the same game, from reading some reviews here and there.

Its loosely modeled after IL-2 Sturmovik. Madox, the lead designer behind IL-2 was brought on as a consultant for this new game.

I just got it on Steam, and I'm fairly pleased with it thusfar.

It has 3 playing modes: Arcade, 'Realistic' and 'Simulator', with increasing levels of realism. One worry I had was that any game designed for a console was going to be far too arcade-y, like HAWX, but I'm pleased to report that it feels just right in terms of an immersive flight combat simulator.

It has the standard tutorials, 5 or 6 campaigns on the British, French, German, Italian and Russian fronts. It allows flying of many airplane models, although not quite as crazily comprehensive as IL-2. Then again, only a complete fanatic is going to notice the subtle differences between a 1943 BF-109 and a 1944 one.

The graphics are very improved over the ole IL-2. The only notable downside to this is, depending on your rig, you might not get the immediate visceral flight control response you can get with IL-2, simply due to the computing overhead involved in rendering more advanced graphics. In addition, they seem to have not included head-shake, which provides added realism in the old IL-2 game.

Anyone else interested in comparing notes on this game? I know I'm one of the few flight sim devotees on this board, but hey.

[Pennilenko]

I don't have a stick anymore, otherwise I would be interested. They don't make really good sticks anymore, in my opinion. I miss me some good flight sim combat.

[Engels]

I've been playing with a logitech freedom 2.4 cordless joystick for years now. Its just fine. Not omgpwnzor twitch fine, but good enough.

[Xuri]

I actually bought this game a couple of days ago myself, as well as a Logitech Freedom 2.4 cordless joystick. Had a lot of trouble getting the game to properly recognize the joystick, though - and for some reason the cordless connection between the joystick and the receiver stops working every now and then. Not particularly fun when you're in the middle of a dogfight or whatever and you suddenly lose control over your plane :/

[Engels]

That joystick has worked for me more or less. One symptom I do have is that it does indeed lose connection with the reciever till I wiggle it. It seems to have a very low idle time out. Other than that, its been ok. For WoP, all I had to do was to assign a device to the game, in this case the Thrustmaster, and it suddenly picked up that I had the logitech. Not great, but it got it working.

After playing this all weekend, I am not sure its all that.

For all the polish it has in contrast to IL-2, they hired one horridly flat american voice 'actor' (probably the dude that fills the copier at the studio) for all nation's pilot's voicers. Including the british! Its a crying shame, because so much else of the game is more polished than 90% of other flight sims.

One element of game play is quite console-y. While in IL-2 they'd send a moderate amount of enemies against you, if you died you had to start the mission over again. In WoP, they send an enormous amount of enemies, and you die repeatedly. However, you don't have to restart, you just respawn in flight just a few yards back from where you asploded. At the end of the mission, your 'score' is evaluated based on your number of 'attempts'. So it feels a little bit like lives in space invaders.

The lack of 'shake' when shooting cannons or going too fast is a bit of an immersion breaker, tbh. It served a good feedback function in IL-2, forcing you to aim for short concise bursts.

[schild]

Has Starforce with a different name. Even on Steam.

[fuser]

I don't have a stick anymore, otherwise I would be interested. They don't make really good sticks anymore, in my opinion. I miss me some good flight sim combat.

I have been finding more of a problem with rudder pedals. My old CH set died so now I'm stuck with a lonely thrustmaster cougar.

Engels do you play Over Flanders Fields?

[Engels]

schild, can you elaborate? I noticed that it had a method by which installation was restricted to 3 times, as well as a rather annoying log-in feature for on-line play via some odd service.

Also, accoring to StarForce,

2. Protection driver

2.1 Do the applications that require activation via the Internet use the protection driver?

No! Since such applications require no optical media in the drive and do not check the uniqueness of such media, they require no protection against optical drive emulators, and therefore, do not use special protection driver designed to work with optical media.

However, according to a publisher’s choice, some applications can employ the protected container technology; the driver is used in this case.

fuser, no, I have not played Over Flanders Fields. Don't think it would be my bag, since WW I planes make me sea sick :)

[schild]

Are you really that unaware of Starforce that I need to elaborate on it?

[NiX]

Please, sir, go on!

[Engels]

I read up some stuff on Wiki, but yes, for the most part none of the games I've played until now had it. From what I can glean off the internets is that:

Early revisions installed a driver akin to Sony's rootkitt-like driver, that affected system performance on machines, sometimes to the point of bricking a hard drive. Rare, but it happened. Secondly, when uninstalling a game that came with StarForce, StarForce itself would stay on the machine. Later versions came with their uninstaller. Several lawsuits ensued for defamation when someone wrote a column in some magazine mentioning the above. StarForce forever deemed a force for evil in the Nerdiverse.

That about sum it up?

[Engels]

Just thought I'd write to myself again on this game

I'm pretty much done with it. I finished the campaign. Its very short. It also doesn't allow you to play the German side. You can do 'custom' dogfights where you can fly the german planes, and they do seem to have realistically rendered aircraft physics (the 109 turns like a bus but climbs like a champ, the FW goes into a stall at the drop of a hat, etc). Another lame thing is that the tail on the german planes have an 'X' instead of a swastica. Not critically important, but really, if you ain't gonna put it on there, don't put anything on it at all.

So in summation; beautiful game, limited replayability.

[Xuri]

I've tried online multiplayer, once. It was a bunch of people (like, 8) flying in a circle trying to find one another, while occasionally someone would stall and crash to the ground. I'd die (from being shot at or stalling too close to the ground), and 10 seconds later I'd re-spawn in the air in the general vicinity of the other players.

[Engels]

I've tried online multiplayer, once. It was a bunch of people (like, 8) flying in a circle trying to find one another, while occasionally someone would stall and crash to the ground. I'd die (from being shot at or stalling too close to the ground), and 10 seconds later I'd re-spawn in the air in the general vicinity of the other players.

To be fair, this describes pretty much all WWII multiplayer flight sim experiences I've ever encountered, short of the MMO Fighter Ace (https://fighterace.ketsujin.com).