Combat Wings: Battle of Britain £4.99 approx $7.50 (it was £3.99 earlier today)
When I saw this on Steam earlier this morning, I though I’m going to buy that once I’ve checked my back balance. I’ve been saving money for a couple of titles that are soon to be released (Borderlands, Painkiller Resurrection, Left 4 Dead 2 and possibly Dragonage Origins). The price isn’t that much, but I’m on a tight budget at the moment; so I read through loads of reviews, watched several You Tube videos and looked at hundreds of screen captures of the game and even downloaded the demo, then realized I’d already bought the game on DVD last year. :)
All the reviews I read said for a budget title it's a good buy; with plenty of action, great graphics, but the multiplayer mode isn't well presented and it has an almost non existant help manual. Still for £4.99 which is approx $7.50) it is a bargain (IMO). I’ve not played it for a while, but only because when I fancy a flight sim I play my more recent purchases such as Tom Clancy’s HawX and Microsofts Flight Sim X (which I only bought recently as it was in a sale for only £0.50). I highly recommend buying Combat Wings: Battle of Britain, especially if you like arcade style flyers rather than the more serious simulators. The game is easy to play and shed loads of fun. When I bought it I was really surprised at how good it was for the price I'd paid (£9.99). I've paid a lot more for other titles that were far less entertaining and much harder to play (Secret Weapons over Normandy and Red Baron) . This game is just pure fun. It’s not got the polish of games like Flight Sim X,, nor HawX, but it’s a lot of fun to play. The following is just one of the more in depth reviews I read (from IGN), referenced HERE, which was accessed on 16th Oct 09.........
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US, January 5, 2009 - Like most of the budget-priced games we've seen from Polish developer City Interactive, Combat Wings: Battle of Britain is decidedly imperfect. In this case, that imperfection manifests itself by way of erratic controller support, questionable design decisions, and a ridiculously tiny game manual. However, it's otherwise a darned enjoyable game and certainly City Interactive's finest air combat effort to date.Make no mistake: this is an arcade look at air combat and as such likely won't impress anyone schooled in hardcore simulations where merely landing or equipping your plane with appropriate weaponry involves thought and practice. But – and this is the important part – it's quite simply a lot of fun. It looks great, it feels just realistic enough that you'll know you're in a World War II-era aircraft, and it offers so much action and keeps you so busy that you'll barely have time to digest all the insults coming your way from your trash-talking Nazi foes.
The game adheres to the concept of previous City Interactive air combat titles in that each of its canned missions plunks you almost immediately into the middle of one firefight or another. Thusly, you don't need to worry about long, sleepy flights, obscure waypoints, fuel limitations, or complex objectives and missions. Nor are you forced to deal with authentic flying dynamics. Indeed, Battle of Britain planes will bank and turn and go inverted and dive almost instantaneously and with nary a chance of equipment failure and very little regard for physics limitations. And for many of us, that's a good thing.But to its credit, Battle of Britain goes much further than prior City Interactive games on the realism front. For example, it allows you to communicate with and command your wingmen. Granted, your roster of commands is limited to just four – "Attack," "Help me," "Follow me," and "Patrol." Nor can you issue any commands until you've graduated to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Yet bossing your buddies around really adds something to the experience, particularly later in the game when the skies are absolutely littered with enemies.
It also asks you to exert manual control over operations such as raising and lowering your flaps and landing gear. The former really helps during tight dogfights with slower foes, and the latter – which was handled automatically in earlier CI games – simply adds credibility. And hey, for the very first time a CI air combat game requires that you "lead your target." Thusly, if you're firing at an enemy that you're not directly following, you need to take into account his speed and where he'll be when the ordnance reaches him. In other words, you can't simply fire at him, you realistically need to fire ahead of him. Nice.
Still, Battle of Britain is not particularly challenging. Only when you've hiked the difficulty level to "hard" and the control scheme to "advanced" rather than "arcade" does it become taxing enough to make you sweat. And even then, virtually all the hardship comes from the fact that there are so damned many enemy aircraft.Sure, the developer spices things up by giving you a choice of several flyable planes (generally the Spitfire or Hawker Hurricane) and several numerous diverse scenarios involving land-based targets, ships at sea, defense, offense, and all sorts of mid-mission surprises, but you're never far from a hornet's nest of angry German pilots.
Not that that's a bad thing for those who prefer to shoot now and ask questions later. Indeed, Battle of Britain makes the shooting and the killing of airplanes really, really fun. For starters, the aircraft models are better than anything we've seen from this developer. They're smartly detailed – right on down to individual rivets and unique decaling – and they look very pretty when the sun hits them just so. But it's the way they incur damage that really sells it.
They'll smoke at first, then belch think black clouds of it when further injured. And when they take that one key hit that ultimately does them in, they'll explode in a massive fireball, wings and bits of fuselage and parachutes spraying this way and that and gliding, gently, earthward. It's an impressive visual reward for a hard-hitting dogfight.
The game goes beyond the budget norm in terms of its environments too. German bombing raids over London, for example, occur in a haze of semi-translucent clouds and fog that temporarily camouflage your targets. Coastline intercept missions may take place under the cover of darkness, in bright daylight where aircraft are obscured in the glare, or during that magical hour at dusk when most everything is bathed in a gorgeous orange hue. The rippling oceans underneath reflect the sunlight, the cities and towns look like cities and towns, and the terrain in general is strong.
And if radio chatter is your cup of tea, you've come to the right place. Not only are your wingmen a talkative bunch, babbling in their best British and Scotch and Polish accents about everything from who buys the drinks afterwards to when they're low on fuel, but even the enemy pilots are busy giving you an earful. Does it make sense that you can hear the enemy? Does it make sense that they trash talk you while hurtling into the hard, hard ground? No, but that's the nature of arcade air combat.Unfortunately, the game has a few rather annoying issues. The most glaring is its erratic controller support. If, for example, you're using a joystick/flightstick rather than the default mouse control, you're forced to endure missions (mostly meaningless ground missions where you're asked to man an anti-aircraft gun) where said stick simply will not work. Moreover, if you ALT-TAB momentarily out of the game, you may well come back to it unable to use your stick at all until you reload.
Perhaps more frustrating is the fact that mid-air collisions might just be your worst enemy. There's a ton of traffic up there, and the software does not support the use of a POV hat to look to either side or above whilst in the cockpit. The chance of an inadvertent crash and therefore a premature end to your sortie is high virtually all the time, and that's not really fair. Nor can you opt to switch off mid-air collisions – like many budget games, the number of options is low.
Battle of Britain likely won't keep you occupied for a long time either. In fact, many players will have finished all twenty-three missions in a couple of afternoons. That said, the game does allow you to go back and re-play any mission you've completed during the campaign as a one-off – something we did many times for the simple reason that we had fun doing it. It should also be noted that both the action and the "plot" flow along nicely from one mission to another, thus making you feel as if you're part of a full war effort.As for multiplayer, you're welcome to engage in deathmatch or team deathmatch competition with up to ten players, but only if you know each other's IP addresses. The game does not offer a matchmaking service or central server.
Our copy of Combat Wings: Battle of Britain included a bonus – not one but two previous City Interactive games: Combat Wings, and World War II: Pacific Heroes. The former is a slightly more rudimentary facsimile of Battle of Britain that takes place in the Pacific Theatre, while the latter is a primitive air combat game that's been available for many years as an online download. Nevertheless, a budget game of this caliber that also includes two bonus games is a pretty good deal in anyone's books.
Closing Comments:Like many budget-priced games and most City Interactive titles we've seen, Combat Wings: Battle of Britain suffers from a lack of quality control and depth. And it definitely won't satisfy those who prefer a simulation style of air combat. Nevertheless, it's the best flying game we've seen from this developer to date and a spirited look at WWII dogfighting that should bring a smile to anyone with an itchy trigger finger and a hankering for action.
Presentation
The manual is ridiculously short and the game has intermittent joystick problems. But it loads and unloads instantaneously, runs smoothly, and feels oh so 1940………. 6.0
Graphics:
The airplane models and environments are pretty and the damage modeling is sufficiently cataclysmic for any thrill seeker……8.0
Sound:
The voice acting is both prominent and convincing, the music is in keeping with the subject matter, and the sound effects are bombastically explosive……..8.0
Gameplay:
Depth is not its strong suit and mid-air collisions shouldn't be your biggest worry, but Battle of Britain is packed with action and quick-reflex fun………….8.0
Lasting Appeal:
It is not a particularly long or challenging game, and its multiplayer mode is rudimentary……..5.0
Overall cumulative average = 7.0
Video's:
You can see video’s of game play HERE, HERE
and HERE
Demo Downloads
You can download a demo from Gamespot HERE (63.1Mb – though you’ll need a free Gamespot account before you can download it); alternatively you can download it from Gamershell HERE, which at the moment is getting a red flag from McAfee’s Site Advisor. I’ve downloaded stuff from Gamershell for at least five years and never ever had an alert, nor any problems with any of the files I’ve downloaded. Apparently links to adtrgt.com have been found which breaches browser security. You’ll find the page I’ve linked to is clean.
You can check out the Steam deal HERE