Wings of Prey (PC DVD)

I wanted to give this a rave review. New Simulators are as rare as hen's teeth. I heard it was a development of IL2, so was quite excited!

I am able to run it at maximum settings, so expected something rather special. However, I'm afraid I was a bit disappointed. I assume the depiction of (the very few) flyable aircraft includes a greater polygon count than IL2 but they don't look as good. In fact they look a bit 2D to me. The cockpits aren't as crisp either.

On the other hand, the terrain and skies are superb. You can fly over the White Cliffs of Dover and easily recognise them. Rain drops splash against your windscreen as you pass through clouds.

There are several difficulty settings. However you can't customise them, as far as I can see. You can't mix and match (eg high realism but no stalls & spins).

The single missions are timed. I can't see how anybody can successfully complete them on "Simulator" setting. On the other hand, knocking down an entire squadron of (rigidly formated) bombers on "Arcade" setting is ridiculously easy.

The campaign is reasonably absorbing. German campaigns are promised later.

Setting up my joystick took a bit of fiddling and I have yet to link the camera to the hat switch.

If this review sounds totally negative, it isn't meant to be. I'm happy to own it. Updates are promised. Additionally, I don't need to keep the disk in your PC to play, so it's tempting to just click the icon and have a quick flight. It's corny but fun!

I really enjoy flight simulation games and was looking forward to this one. To be honest I read a lot of the pre-release reviews and it sounded pretty good. However, I must admit I was a little disappointed when I fired it up for the first time.

For starters the manual provides almost no info on what you are seeing on the screen. The game did not want to recognise my joystick and mapping the device did not work. I wrote to the manufacturers - never got a response!Finally, after manually fiddling with the controls I managed to get control over the aircraft. The aircraft rendering is not very good, I have played IL-Sturmovik for some time and the aircraft graphics are about the same -despite the major advances in game graphics.

The big plus is the environment rendering, now you can fly over cities, and vast detailed countryside. However, everything on the ground is static! Tanks do not move, ships sit there letting you bomb the hell out of them without moving an inch - yes they put up a bit of fight, but how difficult would it have been to have added a touch more reality?

The air combact is the same as IL-Sturmovik, but with added effects, explosions look better, and at times the AI is impressive as you try to get on the tail of another fighter in a dogfight. Once again though the lack of information on what your objectives are makes completing games difficult even in arcade mode. This is a game developed in Russia and they appear to have decided not to bother doing much translation work!

I have to admit I love the vastness (and sometimes boringly long flights) in the IL- Sturmovik series but enjoyed the ability to take on moving convoys. Wings of Prey seems to have put a lot of work in ground mapping and aircraft AI - but missed out on adding ground vehicles that move and therefore the ground looks very bland and sterile - a lot like the empty wastelands in The Battle for Stalingrad part of the game.

Overall, another game that could have been amazing but falls short - how many times is that happening lately with game developers? They state that they will add more content during 2010, so that could be interesting and since it was released they have added a number of patches and upgrades.

It will be interesting to see if it develops.......

This game is beautiful to look at, but very frustrating to play. Even with the realism settings very high you can't escape the arcade nature of the game. Missions are time limited and goal specific, so that you can fail (and get threatened with a court martial) despite the fact you have just shot down two He111's on your first combat mission. The mission simply ends mid-flight. If, like me, you want a combat flight simulator that allows you to fail or succeed a mission on your own terms then stick to any of the Ubisoft "Sturmovik IL2" games. Still the best combat flight simulator games by a very big margin. If you already have them be patient and wait for "Wings of Dover" which is going to arrive in March 2011. In summary "Wings of Prey" is very pretty, but very dumb.