Customer Reviews

Combat Flight Simulator: WWII Europe Series (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've got the first 2 entries in the CFS series, and have mixed feelings about each of them. I suspect that the series takes a radically new turn in CFS3, but I can't be sure. CFS1 and CFS2 look and fly pretty much the same - building a military flight sim out of the tried and true MS Flight Simulator engine (which has the double benefit of feeling and looking real AND the ability to add-on 3rd party aircraft). Unfortunately, the developers took the concept of "MS Flight Simulator with guns" too seriously and never craft much of a military sim to go with the engine - the missions are canned and the campaigns are not only scripted, but short. In CFS: Europe, you can fly allied or axis missions in one of two campaigns - the Battle of Britain (mostly over southern UK, summer-early fall, 1940) or the one for western Europe, 1943. Though the lack of American missions are understandable for the first campaign (Pearl Harbor was still over a year away when the "Battle of Britain" came to an end) the lack of flyable British missions in the second campaign is odd. As a yankee, you'll start out flying the not-very-spritely P-47, before progressing to the faster and more nimble Mustang (and boy, will you feel the difference). Bombers appear in the game, but CFS is strictly a fighter-flyable affair. Ofcourse, if you want to tweak the game yourself, you can find scenery, aircraft and missions to suit your tastes, but that still doesn't excuse how bare a sim CFS is - it's almost as if the programmers decided that there was no point to adding in a wider variety of planes, weapons, scenery or campaigns since they knew that serious users would do it themselves. The game engine is pretty, and allows hardcore users to take real control of their planes (start-up, manifold pressure, mixture, et. al.), but it's nothing spectacular. Ground modeling looks pretty, but there's little complexity to it - bit-mapped images (and not much variety to them) "painted" on naturally irregular topography. Ground targets have very basic damage modeling - hit them enough and they just disappear in unconvincing, "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" style fireballs. Some of the missions seem a tad unrealistic - sending short-ranged Spitfires on strafing missions across the channel when the RAF had barely enough fighters of any kind to stem the tide of Luftwaffe bombers? The missions are also repetitive, though real WWII pilots probably flew an even lower variety of missions than you'll find flying a single tour here. Still, your American bomber formations always meet a small number of the same kinds of fighters - FW-190's and Me-109's. The early German jets appear - but only as ground targets in a late-war mission. You can add AI (that is, non-flyable) aircraft as well, but not as easily. The variety of add-on planes is as limitless as the imagination of the flight-sim community, but is otherwise constrained by the fact that this is a WWII sim. That means that you can fly F-14's against Mitsubishi A6M's ("Splash the Zeros, I say again, SPLASH the Zeroes!"), but you can forget about using the complex sensor suites and sophisticated weapons of modern aircraft on this game (and, as with all entries of the MS Flight Sim series, vertical movers like helos or Harriers are limited in terms of simulating hover-flight). Flight is challenging, but slidable realism allows newbies a softer learning curve. The fluid sense of flight is lacking though - with cloud effects looking less convincing than those used on "EF2000" from 1996. Better effects were found in "Jane's WWII Fighters" which also had more compelling enemies, and a more dynamic campaign (if a more prosaic flight engine).

In short, this is a basic game - good for those who want a simple and fun WWII sim, but can't run the Jane's game.

I own Combat Flight Simulator: WW II Europe, (this review) in addition to CFS 2 (Pacific) and CFS 3 (Europe).

Even thought this is the earliest and most basic of the three-game series, I find it more challenging than CFS 2 due to aircraft seemingly moving at a faster pace than CF2 (and also more detailed ground views), but a bit slower than CF3.

Participants can choose missions representing USAAF, RAF or Luftwaffe perspectives, such as dogfighting other fighters, escoring or attacking bombers, attacking ground targets, and more.

There are training missions and one-time missions as well as campaigns.

You earn a new respect for how difficult airmen from World War II had it in attacking targets and trying to survive in deadly combat. (By the way, there is one World War I biplane included in the mix.)

I prefer the without-cockpit view with the needed info in the upper right corner.

So, get a fast computer and a good joystick and let's fly!

I've always enjoyed CFS 2 and 3 and was extremely excited to find the original. This is great!

As the former holder of a commercial pilot's licence (not ATP) I find the flight response quite accurate, including stalls, and climb rates. The combat is a blast.

This is the first cfs I ever tried, and of all of'em I've tried since(and I've tried a bunch of'em), I gotta say it's the best. Just the single player is awesome offering downloadable content like custom planes and all kinds of single missions. It works excellently with windows xp and a Logitech 3D Pro joystick.

I first got this game back in the late 90's and early 2000...and would hope it would work on a newer system but alas it will not. This is a very good game if you have Windows XP but I now have Windows 7 64 bit and unless there is some real good fix am unable to play it which is a shame as it is one of the best out there for pure flying and settings for beginners.

Great fun flying older planes. Works on Win XP, but made for eariler Win 95 t0 Win 98. Not sure it would run on Vista, (to bad, it's great fun).

The game is older but try and find a WW2 flying game now. I dont like flying the jets, prefer the prop warplanes of WW2. easier for an old man to do. Graphics are dated but I was expecting that.

This is a game from the late '90's, but it is awesome if your a WW II fanatic like I am. There is NO better game for selectable reality. AS easy, or as hard as if your really a WW II pilot. I LOVE this game!

I have 2006 XL and it is not loading. Bought Combat flight simulator 2 WWII pacific theater at same time loaded fine. So far can't figure it out. I removed Pacific to see if it was the problem but no. Now looking on website for help. Nov 2008