Wings Over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot

List Price: $29.95 Discount Price: $8.99

Features:

• Engage in G-pulling, action-packed dogfights in this air-combat game
• Fight against 13 different types of Cold War Soviet aircraft
• Fly era-specific aircraft through Central Europe in 3 epic campaigns
• Random mission generator provides maximum flexibility and replayability
• Highly-accurate planes, weapons, flight models, and challenging enemy AI

Accessories:

PC Gamer (1-year)

Customer Reviews:

One of the best Flight Simulators ever. [Posted on 2008-01-23]
(Update: I've since had this game for six months. I still play it at least four times a week, and I still never get bored. True - some of this is due to the addition of mods found on CombatAce.com, but I will tell you right now that these mods are so easy to use, anyone can do it. Even without the mods, I still play the game using the stock campaigns and aircraft all the time - no mission plays the same way twice, and the ability to customize the enemy AI and friendly AI really keeps the player on his/her toes.

This game definitely has a lot of replay value. I'm sure someday I'll move on to something different, but I'm sure I'll be playing this game for over a year before that happens.)

I am used to playing a lot of the more 'arcade' style flight simulators. In other games, the physics models are usually a joke, and campaigns tend to be non-dynamic, with only a fixed series of missions. Not this game, though.

This game has much more than that. Dynamic campaigns are included that span three time periods of Cold War tension, and each campaign allows you to play multiple styles of missions. Unfortunately, you cannot plan your missions as you could in JSF - but you can tweak the missions that are assigned to you, and success or failure of missions (and varying degrees of either) have a real, tangible effect on future gameplay. Fail to destroy an enemy airbase, and you'll be facing greater numbers of MiGs until that base is put out of commission later on. Fail to stop an enemy attack, and the front gets pushed back to you. Stop an enemy attack, but fail to decimate their ground forces, and that section of the frontline will be contested for a longer period of time. You can also build individual missions using any of the included (or added) aircraft, in different time periods and against different opposition. Missions like these include Strike, Wild Weasel SEAD, Close-Air-Support, Intercept, MigCAP, Recon, and Fighter Sweep. Further, there is an "Instant Action" mode, which basically puts you in the sky in an F-15, with MiGs swarming around you and other bandits on their way.

Weapons are limited to real-life loadouts for all the planes, and there are multiple versions of the F-4 Phantom for you to try and master. Flight physics seem very real - sure, the F-15 can turn and burn with the best of them, but try a nice 90-degree break turn at 400 knots, and you'll soon realize why it's usually reserved for last-ditch evasive maneuvers. Energy management is important in this game (finally!) - if you're too low or too slow, you could find yourself in some trouble. You may find yourself realizing exactly why the West Germans used to call the F-4 Phantom by the nickname "Eisensau", or "Iron Pig".

Enemy AI is pretty good too. So far I've only played on the 'Normal' setting, but I've been shot down in pretty creative ways so far, including having MiGs ambush me while I was dive-bombing in an F-105. I managed to elude them, but ended up so low that a ZSU picked me off.

Let me take this opportunity to mention one other reason that this game is a must-have - the graphics are AMAZING!! The shadow effects and the detail that is put into all the planes are nicely done, and the chaff and flares look as realistic as I've ever seen. SAMs are visible heading right at you, and the way your Sidewinders follow their targets to oblivion is amazing. Everything, from the planes, the cockpits, the terrain, and the battle effects - all of it speaks of top-notch graphics design. Full disclosure - I recently purchased a pretty high-end machine with a nice NVidia GeForce8600 graphics card and 3 gig of RAM (and two quad-core processors) - but this game looks so amazing that I'm sure it would run good on almost any decent machine with a 3d card.
Though this game would probably lag big-time on my old laptop, on my desktop it runs very well. But if you're a fan of flight simulators, and you own a decent machine with good graphics capability, this is the game for you.

Another plus - online modding communities love games by Thirdwire (the developer of Wings Over Europe and Wings Over Vietnam). In online communities, you can find dozens of new plane models, weapons packs, and full-length campaigns for this game and other Thirdwire products. I'm very new to modding (as in, just started two weeks ago), but even with no knowledge I managed to add eight new aircraft and a slew of new pre-made weapons into the game, and learned how to customize paint jobs on the aircraft.

In short, if you want a fun balance between realism and arcade (tending, in my opinion, towards realism), as well as the ability to customize features and fly an ever-growing list of aircraft (over 100 have been modeled online, last time I checked), all bundled with slick graphics and an intelligent AI opponent, this game is worth checking out immediately.

Awesome Combat Sim! [Posted on 2008-02-14]
Wings Over Europe is FUN!

I enjoy flight sims and combat games,but sometimes a sim like Falcon 4.0:Allied Force is a lot of work.Within minutes of installing WOE,I was splashing MiGs from my F-15 Eagle!

The graphics are nice,the framerate is excellent on my 3 year old PC,and the experience 'feels' right!I think WOE strikes an excellent balance between flight games like Ace Combat and complex sims like Falcon 4.I anticipate many hours of enjoyment!

Is not the best but is well [Posted on 2008-03-15]
well, falcon 4.0 is better, more real, but with wings over europe you can fly with other aircraft very beautiful and the graphics are better and you do not need to read a lot to be able to fly!

A bare-bone flight sim w/ an interesting community [Posted on 2008-06-01]
I played a lot of flight sims over the years (starting on Falcon AT, continuing with Flight Simulator, Chuck Yeager, 1942, F-15 Strike Eagle, a lot of Jane's games and even BattleField 2's Project Reality mod), and I was looking for a game like Strike Commander with a real campaign and character progression. Well, this is not the game.

The campaign is just a string of fairly repetitive missions without a strong storyline, there is some character progression in the sense that you sometimes get medals and rank increase, but you'll never feel attached to your wingmen.

What I found instead in Wings Over Europe is a striving community dedicated to bring in new content in the form of planes, weapons, ground objects and maps.

The default map in question (Germany) is fairly boring and flat. Part of the reason for the lack of personality of the ground below is the use of a tile-set system to generate the very vast map.

When some flight sims use actual photo imagery to represent the earth (FS has been doing that for years), it's kinda sad when you see that every city has the exact same shape, and that the sea shore is just a bunch of straight lines.

Then again, the community has greatly improved the look of the stock tiles, and added some campaigns taking place in other parts of the world, so if the green Germany isn't your thing, there are always other opportunities.

The airplanes themselves look great and are realistically difficult to fly with the highest simulation settings. It took me about 2 hours to figure out how to fire a missile in the Phantom, and another 10 hours of gameplay before turning the HUD difficulty setting to medium in order to find where the hell the enemy airplanes were around me.

So yeah, this game is satisfying if you're willing to not go all the way realistic, but way too difficult if you're not hardcore.

Well made, great mod community [Posted on 2008-06-15]
One of the few modern flight sims that makes a very accurate and fun portrayal of the Cold War turning into World War 3. With easy to learn controls, forgiving lower difficulties and more add ons available for free online than any other modern-era combat flight sim it is easily the best in its genre by leaps and bounds.

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