Why did the combat sim genre die?

[Dirk Desiato]

I love combat sims. I started with "F-15 Strike Eagle" on my ol' C-64, played the shit out of "X-Wing" and "Tie-Fighter", "Red Baron", the "Mechwarrior" series, anything that put's me in the middle of the action in a (fairly) "realistic" environment (no "power-ups" and not "my F-16 has 30 missiles!"). The last one I got was "IL 2".

Where are the new ones that can take advantage of the wonderful graphics of today?

[Quasar]

Well there is the upcoming Battle of Britain game from the IL2 guys.

[Mitsugi]

Because nobody buys them and they're expensive to make.

[Dirk Desiato]

Because nobody buys them and they're expensive to make.

I'll take that they are expensive, but I bought a whole lot, and some of them (like the "Wing Commander" series or "Freespace") were very popular. In fact about 90% of the games that I own are combat sims. Have the gaming demographics changed that much?

[Eurhetemec]

Because nobody buys them and they're expensive to make.

That "nobody buys them" could be seen as an effect of their unpopularity, rather than a cause per se, and it doesn't tell us much, and "they're expensive to make" seems to be vague. I don't think you could even vaguely suggest that they're more expensive to design/write than other games, but I do think the sizeable manuals that typically accompanied them probably raised the production cost a little.

I think the root cause is basically down to people stopping being interested in fighter combat in both realistic and unrealistic venues. Not just in computer games, but in media and life in general. In the 1980s, we had things like Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (the less-campy TV show, not the film), Top Gun, Firefox, Airwolf, Blue Thunder and so on.

Clearly people, or at least the media, were pretty excited by/interested in a then-new generation of military aircraft, and the idea of combat in space with fighters - perhaps harking back to ideas of dogfighting and so on in WW2.

However, by the mid-1990s, we've pretty much stopped seeing films and TV shows which actually feature fighter or helicopter combat really at all. Even SF shows are typically about capital ships, with only really the odd fighter - The remade Battlestar with the trend on this, but I don't think that it, by itself, is enough to really change things.

Note that in the more recent Star Wars movies and Clone Wars shows, the fighters have barely featured, and space combat tended towards the confusing and the boring, not the more tense and understandable combat of the original movies.

Why did this happen? I dunno. Perhaps the public as a whole got bored.

One thing that's worth noting is that the next "generation" of fighters and helicopters has essentially not yet appeared - they're not really in our skies much. Many of the more exciting ones, which warranted games in the early-90s and even mid-90s, got cancelled (the Commanche, for example).

Another factor is that realistic aerial warfare doesn't seem to be terrible exciting, just largely clinical and precise in the modern day, and messy and unreliable in the past (and low on ammo, which is not a lot of fun, comparatively).

So personally I think it's a general cultural trend, from the 1990s, that's seen disinterest in "fighters", space or otherwise, and helicopter. Perhaps a general disinterest in vehicles, and focus on the people in them.

Speaking only about gaming, there's also been the rise of the First-Person Shooter, which coincides closely with the fall of combat sims - Sometimes it verges on being a combat sim itself, albeit of a soldier on the ground, and sometimes it features vehicles, only you don't have to read a 224-page manual to know what you're doing, which was obviously

[David J Prokopetz]

Based on my experiences with the genre, I think it just rendered itself inaccessible to most gamers. When the hard core that had become its sole market moved on to other things, the bottom dropped out of the market and the whole genre rolled over and died.

[brooksd01]

I wonder about the general broadening of the gaming market also being a factor. In the heyday of sims not nearly as many people were gaming so the economics were a bit different.

Now companies are aiming at a bigger market for a shorter time so the more niche appeal of sims may be a lot less attractive of a business proposition to the big studios.

[Stephenls]

They made Freespace2 and there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.

[True Blue]

TIE fighter.


Ooooo... Opinions. *Crosses arms*

:D

[Dirk Desiato]

I wonder about the general broadening of the gaming market also being a factor. In the heyday of sims not nearly as many people were gaming so the economics were a bit different.

Now companies are aiming at a bigger market for a shorter time so the more niche appeal of sims may be a lot less attractive of a business proposition to the big studios.

After thinking about it I agree.

Sad really, and it goes with a lot of what I like. I love spicy and exciting food, not the bland sameness that lots of people like. I like Death Metal and Punk Rock, not Pop. I like sci-fi and fantasy, not sports. A lot of what is "popular" is not for me (not better or worse, just not for me) and what is for me is rarer and harder to find.

[Dirk Desiato]

They made Freespace2 and there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.

Elite.:D

[Quasar]

Elite.:D

Indeed.

I think in part its just part of the move away from sims more generally and towards simpler arcadey games.

[Dirk Desiato]

Indeed.

I think in part its just part of the move away from sims more generally and towards simpler arcadey games.

That is the thing. I was a kid in the golden age of arcade games (late 70's through 80's) and I greatly dislike most arcade games. I LOVE "Asteroids", "Lunar Lander", "Defender", and that 2 player version of "Spacewar". I do not like "Pac Man", puzzle games, or "hit a bunch of buttons" fighting games.

[Killfalcon]

Because 10 meters is a long way to fall, but not that far to walk. ;)

[anowack]

I think that the fact that the vast majority of flight sims more or less require a joystick to play probably didn't help much. Since they weren't standard peripherals and for various other reasons (such as those mentioned earlier in the thread) the games weren't driving joystick sales that rapidly, as the size of the computer game market grew, the size of the computer game market with joysticks grew more slowly.

There's still a handful of flight sims (although usually more "arcade" than "realistic") over on consoles.

[Mr. Venom]

Because 10 meters is a long way to fall, but not that far to walk. ;)

What on Earth does it mean?

It's very zen, but it's bending my mind parts.

[Ulzgoroth]

So this is specifically flight sims, I guess? Because if you want stuff really diving off the slope into pure hardcore simulation, there's some very, very hard core tank 'games'.

The space trade/combat genre is cranking out new stuff all the time, but I don't know if that falls inside the lines used here. I don't remember seeing any really recent pure combat sims. Though there was one space combat game with seminewtonian flight physics probably a couple years back. I could probably figure out the name if I try...

[GarouChris]

They made Freespace2 and there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.

And I love the fact that FS2 is still out there. And there are still folks designing mods for it. *Really* good mods. :D

[harleysa]

A number of good reasons have been offered but Id like to offer two more

- The end of the cold war and the realities of modern air power
Combat sims seemed to be at their height towards the tail end of cold war and in its immediate aftermath when we had the very real prospect of major air battles. Today most applied air power is used to bomb targets which simply have little if any means to fight back. Frankly the lack of a real air power enemy sort of limits some of the interest in air combat sims

-Console Gaming
Today if you want to make a real profit you bring out your games on one (or all) of the consoles, or at least make them portable. Most combat sims are simply way to complex to pull this off. Wing Commander wasn't too complex but even that was probably just a hair too complicated to make a real console version work without being too arcadey

[Killfalcon]

What on Earth does it mean?

It's very zen, but it's bending my mind parts.

People, and peple's brains don't treat up-and-down the same way they do north-south-east-west. Even in FPS games, developers often talk about the difficulty of getting players to look up at the right moment to see something awesome.

Flight sims, especially space-based ones, are not easy to get used to. It's hard to build a market out of a genre that adds a whole extra dimension to get lost in, and combined with constant motion and no peripheral vision means you can easily crash if you lose your bearings.
Fighter-jet sims were incredibly unfriendly to new players back in the day, so now new entrants have to fight that inertia to get people to even try them.

[Victim]

Most sim games, or even space combat games, hit the player with the full level of complexity almost right away. An early FPS level gives you movement and one or two weapons. An RTS or Civ game starts you with only a fraction of the total available units and options for modifying your economy.

On the other hand, in the first FS2 mission, you have to deal with energy, targeting, and speed management besides the basic task of lining up enemy ships in your crosshairs - I don't remember if you also have communications options then too, you might be able to call in a supply ship. While the game gets harder, the first real mission has you dealing with pretty much all the control complexity you have at the end. Later on, you unlock better stuff, but it's still two banks of guns and two or three of missiles.

Oh, and your guns/missiles suck. So you can't just line up an enemy fighter for a few seconds and hammer him with a powerful burst; you have to stick on his tail while grinding his shields down. While you have to deal with less enemy firepower at the beginning, the basic task of taking out a single enemy fighter usually seems harder to me then than at the end of the game (and I often replay the FS games, so I don't think it's just learning curve).

And real sims are even worse. I'm not exactly running at max realism, but I still crashed on my first takeoff in IL-2. It took me several missions to be able to engage ground targets without screwing up completely, and more to actually shoot down an enemy. It's satisfying to accomplish something in the game, but potentially very frustrating. Especially since you have handle the different planes carefully. The upgraded version of the IL-2 with the tailgunner flew differently the model I had been using, and I can barely do anything with the IL-6's machine gun armament.

And that's before radar.

[Dirk Desiato]

And real sims are even worse. I'm not exactly running at max realism, but I still crashed on my first takeoff in IL-2. It took me several missions to be able to engage ground targets without screwing up completely, and more to actually shoot down an enemy. It's satisfying to accomplish something in the game, but potentially very frustrating. Especially since you have handle the different planes carefully. The upgraded version of the IL-2 with the tailgunner flew differently the model I had been using, and I can barely do anything with the IL-6's machine gun armament.

And that's before radar.

See, I don't know if it is because I have played a lot of combat flight sims, have had some very basic flight training (I am still a LOOOOONG way from getting my license) or what, but IL-2 was easy for me from day one.

[Dirk Desiato]

So this is specifically flight sims, I guess? Because if you want stuff really diving off the slope into pure hardcore simulation, there's some very, very hard core tank 'games'.

The space trade/combat genre is cranking out new stuff all the time, but I don't know if that falls inside the lines used here. I don't remember seeing any really recent pure combat sims. Though there was one space combat game with seminewtonian flight physics probably a couple years back. I could probably figure out the name if I try...

Oooo! Tanks are a favorite also. What tank "games" are you referring to?
Was that space game "Starshatter"? I haven't played that one enough to master it...yet.:D

[Quasar]

Flight sims, especially space-based ones, are not easy to get used to. It's hard to build a market out of a genre that adds a whole extra dimension to get lost in, and combined with constant motion and no peripheral vision means you can easily crash if you lose your bearings.

Fighter-jet sims were incredibly unfriendly to new players back in the day, so now new entrants have to fight that inertia to get people to even try them.

That certainly wasn't my and my friends experience growing up. They were rather easy to get into. Though perhaps kids have gone all soft today.

[Victim]

See, I don't know if it is because I have played a lot of combat flight sims, have had some very basic flight training (I am still a LOOOOONG way from getting my license) or what, but IL-2 was easy for me from day one.

I hadn't played flight sims for over 10 years, and I was no good at them back then either.

[Ulzgoroth]

Oooo! Tanks are a favorite also. What tank "games" are you referring to?
Was that space game "Starshatter"? I haven't played that one enough to master it...yet.:D
Starshatter, that's it. I played the demo, never got the full game. I was good enough at handling the newtonian business that it didn't cause problems, but never enough to make a serious attempt to take advantage of it.

As for tank games, I've been cautiously prodding Iron Warriors: T72 recently. I haven't figured out yet whether I should call it a game, since I've needed multiple tries to complete the first two tutorials. Doesn't help that the in-game instruments are realistically labeled in russian abbreviations. Shooting down a helicopter with sabot (after I systematically missed with all the gun-launched missiles I was supposed to kill it with) was pretty cool though.

The great WTF of tank games, as far as I know, is probably Steel Beasts. It claims to be intended as a tactical training tool. The current iteration is actually named Steel Beasts Professional. The mind boggles, but I'm certainly not shelling out over a hundred dollars to find out what it plays like.

[Thanaeon]

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.

They did. Edge of Chaos: Independence War 2.

[NoCarrier]

The great WTF of tank games, as far as I know, is probably Steel Beasts. It claims to be intended as a tactical training tool. The current iteration is actually named Steel Beasts Professional. The mind boggles, but I'm certainly not shelling out over a hundred dollars to find out what it plays like.
Not "claims to be used."

I know for a fact that SB is used by the Dutch Army as a tanker training tool, together with VBS2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBS2) for the ground pounders.

As for the general disinterest in new flight sims, I think it has at least partly to do with the fact that simmers—at least the hardcore kind—can easily spend years and years mastering one particular simulation. Simmers are still playing Il-2 Sturmovik (2001) and even European Air War (1998). And as far as ultra-realistic jet sims go, Falcon 4.0 (1998) is still the king of the hill. Since the Falcon community got a hold of the source code for Falcon 4.0 and is cranking out one mod after another, I don't think there's a developer out there willing to spend serious money on a study sim which, in the end, might not even be good enough to rival Falcon 4.0 mods like RedViper, OpenFalcon or FreeFalcon.

[Rupert]

They made Freespace2 and there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.


I thought I-War and I-War 2 were better, actually.

[Rupert]

People, and peple's brains don't treat up-and-down the same way they do north-south-east-west. Even in FPS games, developers often talk about the difficulty of getting players to look up at the right moment to see something awesome.


Make a jungle environment, like Far Cry's, and add leopards that drop on you from above. People will learn, just as they do in the real world.

[GabrielK]

I was somewhat into flight sims back in the day. Had a thrustmaster something or other joystick with the programmable buttons. But I absolutely LOVED X Wing (and Tie Fighter) back in the day. It makes me sad that there's no X Wing game to take advantage of the mighty PC hardware I've got access to now.

[Killfalcon]

That certainly wasn't my and my friends experience growing up. They were rather easy to get into. Though perhaps kids have gone all soft today.

T'was mine growing up.
Mind you, all games were stupid hard back then. Perhaps flight sims just took longer to adapt.

[chiguayante]

My experience with flight sims suggests that the people designing the levels simultaneously made them too expansive and easy to get lost in, and when you do get to the important bits made them too tightly knit to really feel like you can maneuver around in them. This, compiled with vague mission writing and generally hard to understand controls, gave me no incentive to play the games even when theoretically I'd really like the space-flight-combat genre.

[Eurhetemec]

They did. Edge of Chaos: Independence War 2.

Seconded. I-War 2 was beyond incredible.

[Boris]

There are some good arcade flight sims on modern consoles.

All right, there is one. Ace Combat 6. But it is loads of fun, full of aircraft and achingly beautiful. I mean absurdly, absurdly pretty. Not a serious flight sim though, considering you carry hundreds of missiles.

But stay away from Tom Clancy's HAWX. It tries to look like Ace Combat, but beneath the paint and plaster, it is dull and rubbish.

[Qusoor]

Well, for the WWI flight sim enthusiast (you mentioned Red Baron, there's Over Flanders Fields (http://www.overflandersfields.com/), an absolutely drool-worthy flightsim. Seriously. Look at the pictures and the youtube clips. It's frikkin gorgeous, and it wasn't too difficult to learn (I can even land my planes without crashing... and it provides an automatic landing if necessary).

Also, there's Rise of Flight (http://www.riseofflight.com) by a Russian developer that looks extremely detailed. But I haven't played it.

[nonsense]

That certainly wasn't my and my friends experience growing up. They were rather easy to get into. Though perhaps kids have gone all soft today.

Doubtful. I think it's more that the flight sims of today, having taken advantage of additional processing power and an increasingly sophisticated niche player base, are more realistic and as a result miles more difficult and obtuse to get into. The Red Barons and A-10s and such of old - forgiving, unrealistic, accessible sims rather light on the simulation bits - are... well, as far as I can tell, they're no longer made. That or they're very thin on the ground. (Not that flight sims aren't in general, mind).

ed: Wow, OFF looks tempting. Does it, by any chance, have decent learning tools (tutorials, etc.)?

[davidb]

Interestingly car driving simulations have been on the increase over the past years and continue to get more complex and detailed.

Some people who buy flight sims view it as a pocket-trainer to flying an Airbuss 330, others buy them to treat them as an arcade game. The audience dynamics are large, makes it difficult for developers to produce a tight product.

I think a solid X-Wing/Tie-Fighter/Wing Commander clone w/ up-to-date graphics and internet play would do really, really well. Just no one is making them right now.

[nonsense]

Interestingly car driving simulations have been on the increase over the past years and continue to get more complex and detailed.


I think there's less of a barrier there, in that many of us do actually drive cars... not for racing, obviously, but it's still not quite as foreign as trying to make sense of flight.

I'd love to get into flight sims, because I had a blast with them when I was a kid (I played the hell out of Red Baron)... but they're so daunting nowadays. I mean, I tried to play IL-2 like I did RB, but I mostly just stalled and blacked out a lot without having a very clear idea of why, and the game didn't seem terribly interested in explaining itself.

Which is fair, and all. I wouldn't trust me with a plane either. I just think a 'flight school' sort of tutorial mode with maybe a few warnings along the lines of "Hey, idiot, pull up or your wings will fall off," would be extremely handy.

[Dirk Desiato]

IL-2 has lots of settings to make it easier, you can turn off blackouts for example.
I'm really good at thinking in 3D. My wife was watching me playing IL-2 once (me flying a P-47 vs some ME-109s) when she noticed that I was going to overshoot an enemy (I had just pulled out of a dive). I pulled a "high yo-yo" and ended up in perfect position for a kill, which I then did. My wife then said "How did you do that?!?".:D

[Qusoor]

I think there's less of a barrier there, in that many of us do actually drive cars... not for racing, obviously, but it's still not quite as foreign as trying to make sense of flight.

I'd love to get into flight sims, because I had a blast with them when I was a kid (I played the hell out of Red Baron)... but they're so daunting nowadays. I mean, I tried to play IL-2 like I did RB, but I mostly just stalled and blacked out a lot without having a very clear idea of why, and the game didn't seem terribly interested in explaining itself.

Which is fair, and all. I wouldn't trust me with a plane either. I just think a 'flight school' sort of tutorial mode with maybe a few warnings along the lines of "Hey, idiot, pull up or your wings will fall off," would be extremely handy.

Red Baron and the more realistic WWI sims provide this. "Hey, my wood-and-cloth wings are making an ominous groaning noise. Maybe I shouldn't..." Followed by a snapping noise and then the pilot screaming AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" all the way down.

Which was, as I understand it, something like the experience of many WWI pilots.

[nonsense]

Red Baron and the more realistic WWI sims provide this. "Hey, my wood-and-cloth wings are making an ominous groaning noise. Maybe I shouldn't..." Followed by a snapping noise and then the pilot screaming AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" all the way down.

Which was, as I understand it, something like the experience of many WWI pilots.

Fair cop, but by that time it's a bit late. :D

Dirk - I know the difficulty settings exist, but there's a part of me that wants to actually learn to actually play flight sims, and I don't feel there's a whole lot of support for that for rank newbies. Though to be fair, I haven't really looked around. Chances are there's plenty of instructional how-to-play-these-insane-sims web sites on the internet.

[daHob]

Are we talking the actual Sim games, or just 'flying shooting games'? Because the space games are all pretty arcade-y. Flying games have always been kind of a niche market and the real Sim games are just too unapproachable for your average consumer.

A buddy of mine used to work for Graphsim in the mid 90's. He was the tech support/production assistant/write the manuals guy (Graphsim is less than 10 people). So, I actually have playtester credit on a couple of their games (F/A-18 and the sequel, I think). Despite hours of coaching, I have never successfully landed a plane in any of their games, and have thus never completed a mission. The take-off, avoid AAA and bombing stuff parts were not a big deal, but you get low, the ground chop kicks up and *boom*.

Most of the gameplay for flight games is kind of drab. It's either going to be empty sky or space. I wonder if that is part of it? I really enjoyed the Crimson Skies games because the controls were so forgiving you could actually dogfight around skyscrapers and zeppelins (oh, and you didn't have to land). Most of the easily accessible flight games have flight models based roughly on WW1 biplanes. My understanding is, the relative speeds in the space shooters and Crimson Skies tops out at about 250 mph.

[Tindel]

I think a solid X-Wing/Tie-Fighter/Wing Commander clone w/ up-to-date graphics and internet play would do really, really well. Just no one is making them right now.

Project sylpheed was pretty awesome in this vein and did horribly at retail afaik.

[Eurhetemec]

Project sylpheed was pretty awesome in this vein and did horribly at retail afaik.

Everything I heard about that game said it was mediocre, though, so I have real doubts as to it actually being "pretty awesome". A 6.4 metacritic score seems to concur.

On top of that it was based on a slightly-obscure Japanese license that almost no-one cares about.

So, not great gameplay plus obscure license = bad sales? Unsurprising.

An actual X-Wing or Wing Commander game, made now, with high production values, and marketed appropriately, would have a much better chance. It would certainly need to follow the "introduce complexity slowly" model, though.

[woodsmoke]

As I recall, TIE Fighter did a pretty good job of introducing complexity slowly. I didn't have any real trouble grasping the mechanics of it as a 10 year old, at any rate.

'Course, I've been feverishly dreaming of a modern TIE Fighter ever since I lost the ability to play the first one, so.

[Tindel]

Everything I heard about that game said it was mediocre, though, so I have real doubts as to it actually being "pretty awesome". A 6.4 metacritic score seems to concur.

On top of that it was based on a slightly-obscure Japanese license that almost no-one cares about.

So, not great gameplay plus obscure license = bad sales? Unsurprising.

An actual X-Wing or Wing Commander game, made now, with high production values, and marketed appropriately, would have a much better chance. It would certainly need to follow the "introduce complexity slowly" model, though.

1. The gameplay is as good, if not better, than any wing commander title.

2. You're shifting the goalposts. It was a modern wing commander clone, it had snazzy graphics. It sold poorly.

[Theron]

I used to play a lot of flight combat sims and also high-end driving sims back in the 90s. I saw an emphasis on realism (particularly in driving sims like "GP Legends") that took the game to a level of complexity that sucked the fun right out of it. With GPL, there was just no way to turn the settings down enough to have fun with it if you didn't have a high-end gaming system and a force-feedback steering/pedals setup.

The designers and the small group of hardcore fans held this up as a badge of honor, but it turned off new and casual players in droves. As a result, Papyrus (the publisher) went the way of the dodo.

Last summer I got interested by a friend's raving about IL-2, so I went out and bought it and a joystick, and quickly learned I was barely capable of level flight.

On the other hand, I also picked up LucasArt's revamped "Secret Weapons" game on sale and found it almost cartoon-like in it's simplicity.

Honestly, I'd LOVE to see some games that had the level of challenge inherent in "Aces Over Europe" and "Aces Over The Pacific" with newer, spiffier graphics. For my money, they hit the right balance of "realism" with gameplay and I miss that.

- sorely tempted to put a Win98 machine together just to run his old games TB

[Eurhetemec]

1. The gameplay is as good, if not better, than any wing commander title.

That's not what I read in those reviews. I read overcomplicated, I read too short by a huge margin, I read disorganised and it doesn't sound mission-based in the same way.

2. You're shifting the goalposts. It was a modern wing commander clone, it had snazzy graphics. It sold poorly.

Not at all. I heard of it and didn't even know it was a Wing Commander clone (if it even is - doesn't sound like it but w/e) from the tiny amount of press it got. All I knew was it was called Project Sylpheed, was extremely anime to the point of eye-rolling (from the precious few screen shots I saw, which were all of anime talking heads), and wasn't rated very well. As for the snazzy graphics, are you kidding me? I'm looking at shots of the actual game now. It looks mediocre at best, not even on-par with things like X3.

Call me back when a Western-designed game that actually got advertised experiences a similar failure.

[Theron]

As I recall, TIE Fighter did a pretty good job of introducing complexity slowly. I didn't have any real trouble grasping the mechanics of it as a 10 year old, at any rate.

As a somewhat older gamer (I was 31 when it came out), it did. X-Wing was a bit less user-friendly on that front and it seemed like the designers learned from feedback and put the lessons learned into Tie Fighter.

[Qusoor]

ed: Wow, OFF looks tempting. Does it, by any chance, have decent learning tools (tutorials, etc.)?

OFF has "Instant action" in which you get to fly the planes without having them count on your pilot's record. You noodle around and figure out how the plane flies, then you can pick an enemy or two to fight.

Problem: it's reasonably realistic, so you get to chose if you want to engage those eight fighters below you with your four-man squad. And the AI gunners don't all suck. You can increase the difficulty and realism levels as you get practice.

Taking off is generally as easy as turning the magnetos on, going to full throttle, and pointing the nose up. Landing is more difficult, but you can quit missions and not have to do that.

[Tindel]

Not at all. I heard of it and didn't even know it was a Wing Commander clone (if it even is - doesn't sound like it but w/e) from the tiny amount of press it got.


Call me back when you have an informed opinion.

[walruz]

They made Freespace2 and there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Seriously. Make an SF combat sim game better than Freespace2. I dare you.

Starlancer?

[Phasma Felis]

All I knew was it was called Project Sylpheed, was extremely anime to the point of eye-rolling
I was about to roundly mock you for using "anime" as a adjective, but then I hit Wikipedia and found this screenshot.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Project_Sylpheed_Crew.jpg

Apparently Cyndi-Lauper-with-a-boob-job there is meant to be a flight leader. Never mind.

(But, seriously, please don't do that anime-as-pejorative-adjective thing, it's really annoying)

[Cortani]

I broke two joysticks over X-Wing Alliance. That game was fun (and I believe it had online multiplayer, but I didn't have a modem in those days of yore).

[Eurhetemec]

(But, seriously, please don't do that anime-as-pejorative-adjective thing, it's really annoying)[/SIZE]

I'm using it as a factual adjective. Anime is an art style. Any attempt to argue about that is dashed on the definition of the word style as it relates to art. In this case it's seen as pejorative because goddamn that's stereotypical and stupid-looking in a peculiar way only that particular art style can achieve. You even agree. Just as a point of order, you could theoretically even have a game which was say, pre-Raphaelite to the point where I wanted to throw it out the window. Not another bloody curly pale red-head simpering at me! It's a matter of being a stereotypical-to-the-point-of-stupidity example of the genre.

Call me back when you have an informed opinion.

Ooooh, get her, as they say. I do have an informed opinion, thanks. My point was that the zero advertising and un-informative reviews combined with anime-styling did not help this game, at all.

[nonsense]

OFF has "Instant action" in which you get to fly the planes without having them count on your pilot's record. You noodle around and figure out how the plane flies, then you can pick an enemy or two to fight.


I've been considering it, but Steam offering the full-on all-expansions IL-2 for $10 seemed like a better value. That ought to keep me busy for now, and without any significant financial commitment. If I like it enough that I feel like another sim, I'm leaning more towards Rise of Flight, on account of it's Very Very Pretty and apparently quite authentic in feel.

Anyway, I've realized in playing around with IL-2 for the last few evenings that I actually do remember how to fly sims (minus landing, at which I'm a danger to myself and pixellated others), at least in forgiving planes like Bf-109s and Spitfires. I only stalled out once in an evening of flying about, and that was more or less by design. What I absolutely can't do is keep track of what the hell is going on and where my enemies are and hey who's shooting me and why am I plummeting eject eject eject crash.

Feels good, though. I didn't realize how much I missed these games.

[NoCarrier]

...at least in forgiving planes like Bf-109s and Spitfires.
Actually, the Bf-109 had a very fragile and narrow landing gear and was notoriously accident prone during take-off and landing. The automatic prop pitch control, on the other hand, is a marvelous design feature. One less thing to worry about, at least.

[nonsense]

Actually, the Bf-109 had a very fragile and narrow landing gear and was notoriously accident prone during take-off and landing.

Interesting. I wonder if that's modelled in IL-2. I've mostly been starting in the air, so landings and such haven't been an issue. I found some neat takeoff/landing training missions with walkthrus as to the necessary steps, various approaches, etc., so I'm going to work through those.

[litlfrog]

Another vote for "they're just too hard." The last combat sim I spent money on was IL-2. I wanted to like the game, but after the eighth time I never came close to hitting a target with rockets in my first mission and being completely unable to land, I called it a day. I could see trying a modern sub simulator, maybe, but realistic flight sims are way too hard.

[nonsense]

My first "successful" landing took place last night. I missed the runway by a bit, nearly hit a grounded plane, and then just sort of drove my way out of the airfield altogether into the grass beyond... but nevertheless, I ended up on the ground having broken neither plane nor pilot. I think I may need to dial back the realism a bit to allow checking the external view now and again, though. I'm finding it hard to judge my landing approach over the cockpit at times.

Still, things are looking up in Simland.

[JohanKoch]

There was a tough balance in flight sims between realism and fun.

For a while, in the 90s, many flight sims were going to huge efforts to be realistic. That is fine...except, 1.) realism means complicated, with many controls to learn, and as a result turned off the casual gamers, and 2.) realism can sometimes mean boring (especially in modern, over-the-horizon-combat games), unless you are a dedicated air combat geek.

However, there were plenty of games that handled the realism/fun balance fairly well. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat was a hugely playable game from the early 90s that I invested many, many hours in. And, of course, the previously mentioned X-Wing and Tie Fighter did not need to worry about realism, and were incredibly awesome games.

I can't imagine these games are so much harder to program than anything else, and I too am rather mystified why they have mostly disappeared. So, for me, the main reason they are less popular must because they require an extra peripheral (the joystick), which is less common these days.

By the way, I do still own a joystick, but have not played a flight sim for years, though I'd kill for something as much fun as Chuck Yeager, or X-Wing. These days, I mostly use it for sailing simulations (Virtual Skipper (http://www.virtualskipper-game.com/en/), a really fun game with a great online community, and free to download as well). If there is a modern game and plenty of players for a sailing sim these days, why not flight sims? They can't be that much harder...

[Dirk Desiato]

My first "successful" landing took place last night. I missed the runway by a bit, nearly hit a grounded plane, and then just sort of drove my way out of the airfield altogether into the grass beyond... but nevertheless, I ended up on the ground having broken neither plane nor pilot. I think I may need to dial back the realism a bit to allow checking the external view now and again, though. I'm finding it hard to judge my landing approach over the cockpit at times.

Still, things are looking up in Simland.

Congratulations! :D Any landing that you can walk away from...

I just (in IL-2) made my first successful aircraft carrier landing in a F4-U Corsair. It only took me 3 tries.

[zen_hydra]

I think that Operation: Flashpoint has to be my favorite PC game of all time. I used to lose whole days just creating every combat scenario that I could imagine in the editor and then playing through them from every angle.

I mourn the loss of real, tactical shooters. My heart broke when Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon turned into standard first-person shooters (and discarded their realism in the process).

I am much more of a console gamer nowadays, but if they came out with a PS3 version of an Operation: Flashpoint (or ArmA) style game that had a powerful and intuitive editor I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. Especially if it had an ability to share one's mods/missions with a whole community. Like the way that Little Big Planet works.

[Eurhetemec]

I think that Operation: Flashpoint has to be my favorite PC game of all time. I used to lose whole days just creating every combat scenario that I could imagine in the editor and then playing through them from every angle.

I mourn the loss of real, tactical shooters. My heart broke when Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon turned into standard first-person shooters (and discarded their realism in the process).

I am much more of a console gamer nowadays, but if they came out with a PS3 version of an Operation: Flashpoint (or ArmA) style game that had a powerful and intuitive editor I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. Especially if it had an ability to share one's mods/missions with a whole community. Like the way that Little Big Planet works.

Oddly enough, I see such games in the future. I mean, not only have people like me, you, my brother and half the people I know been wanting them since before they were technically possible, but the trends towards user-generated content, sharing and so on, seem strong - You mention LBP, and there's a similar kart-racer coming for the PS3 too, and I really don't think that's the last we'll see of such things.

Operation Flashpoint was amazing for screwing around in, multiplayer. My brother used to make an island, place vehicles and weapons about it, and then we'd play it with a couple of friends on deathmatch, and was absolutely amazing fun. I still remember incidents from it, like when I was messing around in a Hind, shooting rockets at a tank and taunting those in it, and the managed to get a direct hit on me with the tank's main gun. Ouch! Or chasing people on foot in that Russian AA gun (the ZSU?). That thing was a meatgrinder!

They really need more games like that, only more accessible and perhaps a bit more arcade-y in the way they place.

[Strabo]

Il-2 is cheap and on steam, and it seems like something I could get into. However, I don't have a joystick, do you really need one? Or can you just fumble around with the mouse?

[Evan Waters]

Are we talking the actual Sim games, or just 'flying shooting games'? Because the space games are all pretty arcade-y. Flying games have always been kind of a niche market and the real Sim games are just too unapproachable for your average consumer.

A buddy of mine used to work for Graphsim in the mid 90's. He was the tech support/production assistant/write the manuals guy (Graphsim is less than 10 people). So, I actually have playtester credit on a couple of their games (F/A-18 and the sequel, I think). Despite hours of coaching, I have never successfully landed a plane in any of their games, and have thus never completed a mission. The take-off, avoid AAA and bombing stuff parts were not a big deal, but you get low, the ground chop kicks up and *boom*.

I think one of those- Hornet or whatever- I played, and just bailed out over the sea each time. You still get to continue.

But the landing gear failed every goddamn time. I'm not sure what the deal was with that.

[Qetu]

Re: Joystick.

The only way i liked playing TIE Fighter was with the mouse. It must be just me, though. :(

[Rupert]

Operation Flashpoint was amazing for screwing around in, multiplayer. My brother used to make an island, place vehicles and weapons about it, and then we'd play it with a couple of friends on deathmatch, and was absolutely amazing fun. I still remember incidents from it, like when I was messing around in a Hind, shooting rockets at a tank and taunting those in it, and the managed to get a direct hit on me with the tank's main gun. Ouch! Or chasing people on foot in that Russian AA gun (the ZSU?). That thing was a meatgrinder!

ZSU-23-4, I expect. And yes, like most automatic AA systems, it'll chew up infantry and unarmoured vehicles very effectively.

[Ulzgoroth]

Re: Joystick.

The only way i liked playing TIE Fighter was with the mouse. It must be just me, though. :(
I played Super Wing Commander, Hellcats over the Pacific and, I think, X-wing exclusively with the keyboard. Mouse? Bah.

For something more modern/realistic, though, joystick please. Mice can be twitchy and keyboard control tends to be rather imprecise.

[Patrick Y.]

One thing that always killed it for me with the realistic games was the fact that I'm a lefty. I had one of those cool stick and throttle combos, and found out that since it was geared for a rightie, I wasn't able to fly with anything even close to precision.

On the other hand, I rocked the house with Tie Fighter, Aces over Europe/Pacific, and Wing Commander.

I might be tempted to hit up one of those again, but I'm just not sure the passion is there for me anymore.


Now, expanding into Mechwarrior type "sims", I'd be all over a good one. I had an endless appetite for that whole series, and played the shit out of them.

[nonsense]

Now, expanding into Mechwarrior type "sims", I'd be all over a good one. I had an endless appetite for that whole series, and played the shit out of them.

Y'know, I do wonder sometimes where those went. They seemed to die off very suddenly.

[Qetu]

They stopped doing the arcade -> home game jump, then stopped the japan arcade -> rest of the world. :/

[Catfish]

Yes, I want my Mechwarrior back.

The last time I went to Virtual World in Chicago I was greeted by an overcaffeinated man in urban combat fatigues adorned with the fist of House Steiner who barked out "what's your ride?" before ushering me into a seven foot pod with Carpe Diem stenciled on the side to blast the shit out of a hapless tourist couple and their two children. When I took some friends down to Chicago a few years ago, I eagerly led them down the hall to the alcove set aside for the VW pods and was greeted by a bank of touch consoles displaying the title screen of some Bejeweled clone.

On consoles we went from piloting fully customizable lumbering monsters in service to House, Clan, or C-bill to Mech Assault, which was essentially a multiplayer third-person shooter that happened to use robots as character models. Then that too tanked, and now we are left with Armored Core 4 as the sole standard bearer.

Y'know, I do wonder sometimes where those went. They seemed to die off very suddenly.
Mechwarrior is in that spirit of computer games that looked at all those buttons on the keyboard and saw a challenge. It couldn't transfer to consoles. And that series was the genre in the western market. There was that off-brand clone back in the Mechwarrior 2 days, infrequent imports of Armored Core, and Front Mission, and that's pretty much it. Sim games in general seem to be the province of a small handful of franchises that release iterative sequels adapting the engine to faster cpus and better graphics. They are not easy to program and the market segment is not broad enough for very many games covering the same subject matter.

[NoCarrier]

Youtube clip I made three years ago already. Shows me playing Falcon 4.0 training missions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmTSjePGqD8

[zen_hydra]

Yes, I want my Mechwarrior back.

I think that with the plethora of motion controllers being developed for the consoles, that we could see a very cool mecha simulator game, which utilized such a control scheme. I think that the PS3 motion control setup will be the most practical because it incorporates the motion capturing PS3 Eye, which also has a microphone to receive voice commands, along with control wands, which have buttons, accelerometers, and probably analog thumbsticks.

Just imagine piloting a humanoid mecha with that setup. You have a controller in each hand. The various triggers fire your weapon arrays. The face buttons control menu navigation. One thumbstick controls the mechs legs, while the other one controls the head/sensor array. Your arm movements are tracked and mapped, at a 1/1 ratio, to the movements of the mechs arms, and you interact with the mechs AI via voice command. You could use voice commands to manage things like your heat sinks, call for SatNav information, calling in air/artillery strikes, calling for backup, and calling for dropship extractions. Marrying these motion controls to a mecha simulation game seems like such a no-brainer to me. I really hope some game designer thinks to propose doing such a project soon.

Anyway, if such a control scheme would work for humanoid mecha simulators it could also work for a human scale tactical shooter. Imagine a shooter where you can use your body movements to carefully peek around the edge of cover, or use the 1/1 motion tracking for precision aiming. Thinking of the potential hard-core gaming applications of an accurate motion tracking system has me on the verge of nerd-gasm.

[Kwitchit]

The Red Barons and A-10s and such of old - forgiving, unrealistic, accessible sims rather light on the simulation bits - are... well, as far as I can tell, they're no longer made.

There are the Battlestations games- Midway and Pacific. Both are great fun, not very realistic, and have ships and submarines as well as planes. I don't know what's more fun, zipping through a Japanese invasion fleet in a PT boat sinking all the landing craft, air combat, or vaporising destroyers with the Yamato's main battery. Actually, I do: naval artillery is awesome.

It also has that great thing where you command a lot of mostly AI-controlled units, but can "jump in" to one when you feel like it. So you can order your carrier to launch a torpedo-plane strike, jump into one of your destroyers to depth-charge an enemy submarine, jump into a fighter to drive off an attack on the torpedo planes, jump into another destroyer that's making contact with the enemy destroyer screens... when the torpedo planes are approaching the target, so you jump into the flight leader, lead the attack in through the AA fire, drop, and jump back to the flagship in time to see the enemy carrier sinking...