Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
Let us know how you get on with the Black Shark and ICE. They're both titles I have an eye on, as well as A-10, but the first paycheck, after it is dissembled and consumed by reality, will probably go towards hardware upgrades and quite possibly a TrackIR...
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Well, first feedback from me on Rise of Flight. It looks brilliant in graphics, and flying the planes is a challenge. So is dogfighting - I find it incredibly tough to land a well-aimed shot here. So on this aspect, thumbs up from me.
But:
It has the IL-2 disease, like I mwentioned it somewhere else. Indeed it is like IL-2 in another era, with better looks and other planes. It is optimized for pure dogfighting action - and nothing else. There is no atmosphere - or as much as you know from IL-2. There is no feeling to be there - or as much as you know from IL-2. In principle, whatever you liked and hated about IL-2, you likely will experience again here, just looking that much better (flying at sunset or dawn is fantastic, so are the clouds).
Technically, this sim is brilliant. Physically, it seems to be correct. Atmospheric - it is a looser like Flanker, Lock On, IL-2 and the many clones of it. Somehow these Eastern studios simply do not know how to get a good package together, they excel in the technical aspect, but the package they form from that feels lifeless and sterile. No match for the drama and nerve-wrecking hectic, the mounting tension and excitement of doing battle in Steel Beasts, or flying in the campaign world of Falcon 4, or the sense of doing something epic when meeting huge formations like in BoBII and EAW with hundreds of planes.
I also run into quite some bugs, mostly invisible planes of which I only be aware because of their labels chasing around in the sky - without the plane they are being attached to.
I do not doom this title, it is too well-done visually and technically. If I have to rate it like in old score system for figure skating, I would give it a very high 5.8 or 5.9 in the technical A note for difficulty, and in the B-note a high 3.x or a low 4.x score for the artistic impression - I know that I will not play this as enthusiastically as I played Longbow 2, European Air War, Falcon, not to mention Steel Beasts. It feels too sterile to really pull me into it's world, and have me immersed in it for long ongoing story-telling.
These Eastern studios for simulations really need to learn how to perform better in this regard. Technically they are beyond doubt, but the design of the package is always showing the same kind of lacking imagination - since ten years now.
For the sake of flying it - get it. But know what it is that you are getting: ^this, and not more, but also nothing less.
I had my first two test sessions in the Black Shark cockpit also. No flying, just looking. The cockpit is brilliant. And it easily offers the most realistically looking HUD I have seen so far. I will be happy to just learn to fly and discover the world with it. Once I haver learned how to unlock the collective, that is.
It indeed reminds me of the complex cockpit modules for FS - there the major pleasure is to read and to study and to learn them. It feels the same with Black Shark. From what I read, it seems to be the same with A-10 (670 pages manual).