I have to aire my own personal opinions on this game after, having been an avid fan on Oleg Maddox from the beginning, purchasing all his PC work & addons, I feel I am entitled to a say re: this console attempt.
Being a lucky owner of PS3 & 360, I have been so looking forward to this game for what seems an age. I remember reading the promises & words like "realism", "sim" etc etc. This was supposed to be everything that is IL-2, coming to console but I have to say, it couldn't be further set apart & in my opinion, the only thing that seperates this from the highly arcade "Blazing Angels 2" is no floating 'powerups' in the sky.
Allow me to backup my opinion & compare BoP to the IL-2 series.
The last PC offering "IL-2 Sturmovik 1946" has over 250 playable aircraft, ALL WITH COCKPITS (so Anoton's explanation of money trade offs to leave out German Cockpits from a paultry stable of 40 aircraft of which only around 12 have cockpits, is a bit baffling, especially when you compare the price differences between these titles), a fantastic immersion is always felt in 1946 in the most simplistic of ways; taking off for example before each mission. Why on earth has the player been denied the option to take off from his airfield with his squadron? Where's the immersion in being "thrown" in the air with no background of the mission, very little target information etc.
Speaking of immersion, I was looking forward to flying & gunning from the Blenheim bomber as I was told by the booklet aswell as reviews that the camera cycles from view to view & incorporates a gunners eye view. Now forgive me here but I was assuming that at the very least, the gunning could be done from his viewpoint but in third person???? How is this immersive? How is this realistic? How is this even bearly enjoyable?
1946 will put the player from position to position within the aircraft at the touch of a single key & with no expense spared, beautifully rendered bomber cockpit, bomb aimer station & gun pod etc.
1946 incorporates an extremely powerful yet such a simple-to-use mission editor whereby the player can create his or her own missions by use of waypoints, & capping it all off by dropping in static cameras in which to view the action after the mission (or even during). Have a look at some of these on youtube, they're incredible & all done ingame.
Now I fully realise the dominant numbers of the console market have no wish for such a tool but .... not even having a flyby view or any options for the player to view a fantastic dogfight that he or she has just taken part in?? Come on!!!
Flight controls. I bought the AV8R-02 especially for the 360 version of the game I purchased (after playtesting both 360 & PS3 demo versions to death) &, like many threads state here, the dead zone is enormous & completely unplayable.
Also, Playing in realistic mode & reaching for the 'padlock enemy' camera button, you actually have to take your hands OFF the flight controls when viewing the enemy. Thinking a simple remapping would obviously solve this, I'm so disappointed to find that even this simple yet crucial task is denied to the player.
I'm fully aware that there has to be sacrafices made to incorporate a console version of a FlightSim but all the things I have stated HAVE BEEN DONE BEFORE ON CONSOLE. Operation Flashpoint on the original Xbox was a PC port & kept the fantastic mission editor intact, the incredible & now respected & highly under rated OVER G FIGHTERS for 360 enabled to player to relive his or her dogfights in multiple camera views aswell as incorporating great cockpits for each one of its aircraft & obviously allowed for customizable controls aswell as allowing the player the chance to taxi, take off & land.
The online area of this is a joke, I'm sorry but there's no other way to describe a ranked player dogfight where you clearly have such an edge over your opponent (or vica versa) & he or she can bearly fly from the direct result of your gunning. he can bearly stay in the air but then he stalls near the ground, goes into terra ferma & you are NOT REWARDED THE KILL???? So I am clearly outmatched, smoke pouring from my Hurricane, can't see out of the cockpit visor (obviously not a German aircraft or a Blenheim then); what's going to stop me from heading south & ploughing into the ground? there's no points loss & hey, I get to start far above my oppenent in a nice shiney new plane!
I've not even made any intentions to go into the anoraky bits like the spits in BoB actually being Mk.Vb's & the hilarity of the P-51 cockpit actually being a P-47 because those elements don't detract from the consoles gameplay. This title could have been so much more but once again, there is a developer out there that thinks that they have to 'dumb' games down for the console generation.
I should've trusted my instincts I guess when there was no Oleg Maddox or Maddox games label attached to this title.
One of your forum members has summed this console 'GAME' in 2 glorious sentences.
"Gameplay 5/10, Graphics 9/10. It's like a beautiful but very dumb woman"
Here's a link to just one video I made using IL-2 Sturmovik 1946's ingame cameras. Imagine if you could do this & view your dogfights in such a way in BoP. It is however supposedly the next generation of gaming & IL-2 has been around for so long!
09-06-2009, 03:15 PM
Hybrid Mode
