Wings of prey - steam sale.
 

Wanted to give you guys a heads up, for next 12 hours Wings of prey is $6 on steam (80% off for christmas) sale. Its more arcadey then Il2 but its still a fun game and has a (simplistic) simulation mode (arcade - realistic - simulation). In any case its worth picking up for the price to hold you over christmas!

(Posted it here in IL2 because the other forum for birds of prey is console players so I thought it would be more appropriate here.)

wings of prey is only xxxx! is not remotely llike il-2. is pure xxxx

but you dont know that wings of prey is Beta. yu are buying a Beta product.

read the interviews, wings of prey will be, in some future, like il-2, but never like SOW. but noobs will buy wings of prey final product for pure ignorance :-P

It's no worthy competitor to Il-2 1946, but I'm still tempted for £3.99.

I bought it for full price. Its the console port for pc, far from perfect and not a good simulator but its still fun (except in arcade mode). Product isnt beta quality - its pretty good, the Yuplay DRM is beta and horrible!

Anyone know if SOW will be on steam?

Agree with last post, not to be compared as a sim with IL2 but Realistic and SIM levels are 'instant action' fun. MP is the main gripe with sessions appearing as joinable but unable to actually join.

Arcade difficulty level is not for the IL2 devotee for sure........:grin:

Bought it, really apreciated the heads up, thanks.

And for all you hardcore simmers who say that Birds of Prey is xxxx, and is no sim in any standards whatsoever.

i say to you:

just buy it for the eyecandy.

because it does look really nice.

I'm glad I only spent €5 on it cuz I uninstalled it 2 hours after trying it out. LOL

zakkandrachoff,

I fly Wings of Prey, and do have some complaints. The same goes for IL2. I have also had a lot of fun with WoP. But your critique is so compelling and eloquent, and is so full of..... information of which I was not aware, that I just may delete it from my hard drive.

binky9

:lol::lol::lol:

but so frustrating... watching ai i16s shoot down all the 109s when all i need to do is shoot one down.. then they get up to 4k and my engine dies and im stuck thinking.. "but it looks soo nice.."

I didn't really want to dig up this thread, but, waddya know, turns out this 'Wings Of Prey' crap isn't so totally crap after all.

I bought it on the steam sale, so I didn't have much to lose anyway, but from what I've seen of it so far, full price wouldn't have been a rip off.

I got it set up and running without too much stuffing around, but I'm not even going to try and play it online, so I don't know what that involves. And I still haven't got all the keyboard commands etc. fully configured, just wanted to get it up and running well enough to see what it had to offer. Was prepared to be underwhelmed and uninstall it straight away, but I wasn't/haven't, yet.

I started off playing through the training missions while I got my hardware and in-game settings configured, and thought it was really good how quickly and easily the training missions led into playing in 'sim' mode. Then I just played through the 'Battle Of Britain' single missions, and the first 'Stalingrad' ground-attack mission, with all 'realism' and graphics settings maxed out.

The 'Battle of Britain' stuff was a real eye-opener. None of the screenshots or video's I've seen of 'Wings Of Prey' really convey how good that scenery is. They always make it look cinematic and fake, but that's not how I was seeing it when playing it. Those graphical effects were there, but I was just noticing how realistic it all looks compared to every other flight sim I've played. It was interesting too seeing for the first time some of the features in 'WOP' that we know will be in Oleg's 'BOB' as well. The variable terrain, individually placed ground objects, and self-shadowing cockpits for example. In some ways playing those 'BOB' missions in 'WOP' was like playing a preview of Oleg's 'BOB'.

There were a lot of really good moments in those 'Wings Of Prey' 'BOB' single missions too. The one where you have to do a touch-and-go tour of several airfields in the rain was the most memorable mission for me. And that last one I played, the first Stalingrad ground attack mission flying an Il-2, was incredible in it's ground and terrain detail. It really is amazing stuff. Reminded me of some of the things in the 'Il-2' series that blew me away when I first saw them.

But yes, the no-warning stalls were infuriating, while in other ways the planes' behaviour is very forgiving. The AI and the flight modelling can be challenging, but not necessarily in a realistic way...

To sum it up, after my first couple of sessions with it, I'd say 'Wings Of Prey' is to 'Il-2 1946', like the later 'Call Of Duty' games are to 'Red Orchestra', if anyone's familiar with those. It's overall surface level of 'polish' is better, but despite whatever it may do 'better', it lacks a certain 'deeper' something. Those kinds of games, like big-budget movies, are more reliant on creating a spectacle and putting on a show, and they're very popular when they do it right. Whereas other kinds of productions are more challenging and demanding of their audience, and often rely on providing some kind of learning opportunity or experience. Not that it's ever really that black and white or extreme.

Yeah, so, anyway, those are my first impressions. Played on a PC, in 'simulation' mode, 'Wings Of Prey' isn't just some stupid console shooter, but could be, I think, a pretty good introduction to combat-flight-simming. Glad I checked it out.