Rating: 
Summary: Lots of practice and patience
Review: This is an excellent game, but not one that you can really jump right into. It takes a lot of playing to get used to the (MANY) controls and commands. Microprose was quite thourough and everything is pretty darn authentic. If you've got the time and patience this game is very rewarding.......one downside, no joystick calibration? or force feedback....otherwise excellent!
Rating: 
Summary: Better than I expected
Review:
I had another B-17 game some years ago. This one is significantly different. This is a real challenge! First, the instrumentation and interior graphics are very good. They could be improved by allowing the flyer to operate the flight deck controls with the mouse, but that is nitpicking. The exterior graphics are not state-of-the-art, but they are plenty good enough to really experience the game. The sound is good and realistic.
I had better identify my equipment so that you can judge my viewpoint. I have a 1.8 MHz Pentium 4 with a half-gig of RAM and my OS is Microsoft Windows ME. Video is ATI. I use a CH Flightstick Pro USB and CH Pro Pedals USB with Control Manager. (The brakes do not work with this simulation. Everything else works fine and the loading was easy. As to my experience, I'm in my mid-seventies and made my first solo in the mid '40s. I've flown a variety of single engine aircraft over the years, but have little multi-engine experience, and that only as air crew, except on the computer. I've also built and flown a variety of radio-controlled aircraft. I have flown just about every decent simulator on the market since 1989, but my specialty is WWII aircraft since that is my generation. I'm partial to the Pacific Theater, and particularly love the F6F "Hellcat" as a fighter plane--it accounted for nearly 80 percent of all the Japanese aircraft shot down in air-to-air combat in the Pacific, and had a 19-1 kill ratio. Not bad. It also made more aces than any other allied single-engine fighter plane. I mostly fly fighters. I think the best combat flight sim (for graphics and flight characteristics) currently on the market is IL-2 Sturmovik. Jane's WWII Fighters and and Microsoft's Combat Flight Sim 2 are neck-and-neck for second place, and I'm looking at MS Combat Flight Sim 3 with high hopes. This is a good sim. It is very realistic in the flight characteristics of a large multi-engine prop driven aircraft. The sounds are very realistic as well, and for those who think it is a difficult game--it is! But then, so is actually flying such an aircraft, but it can be learned. Practice, practice, practice! The ability to move from one crew position to the next easily is not realistic, but it is great fun! One thing I appreciate is the very thing that bugs many; the fact that you can spend hours on a single mission--in fact, you can spend several minutes stacked up, orbiting your own airfield just waiting to land after a mission. Oh, you can avoid it by speeding things up to 8X time, but of course the actual aircrews were simply stuck with it. That's just the way it was! In real life, it was hours, weeks, sometimes months of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. "Hurry up and wait" was as typical of WWII as "Kilroy was here." But, do you want to get a feel for how it really was (without the gut-wrenching fear, of course) or do you just want to play another game? One thing about the boredom of hours of droning engines--it lulled the crew, so that when the action suddenly started when a Bf-109 or FW-190 or (God help us!) an ME-162 suddenly bounced you out of the sun, it was all the more unexpected. This is of course not like being at war. Not even close. The people who really flew in these ships actually died, as you know. More than 50,000 men from the 8th died over Europe. That's the entire crew of 5,000 different aircraft. Losses were high. It was hard to get through the 25 missions required, alive. For the Luftwaffe, it was, if anything, worse! There was no limit to the number of their missions. They flew until they were killed or the war ended, whichever came first. I recommend this game if you have the patience and the equipment tofly it properly. If you are simply looking for something that will allow you to shoot down lots of "enemy" quickly, this is probably not for you. Joe Pierre, USN (Ret)
Rating:
Summary: B-17 is a great game!!!!
Review: B-17 Flying Fortress is a good game for several reasons. It has great historical accuracy. It has real targets that were of importance to the 8th airforce at that time. Some of the game modes are:1) Bomber campaign. In this, you command a B-17, and 10 men who flew it. It has a file containing everything about every crew member. 2) Squaderon campaign. In this you command a squaderon of B-17s. You pick targets,pick the planes that go on the mission,pick ordanance, change waypoints, and assign recon missions. There are all the targets on the map in Germany and France, and you pick 3. They are Primary, secondary, and tertiary. Everything about each individual plane is the same. 3) Historical mission. Fly 6 historical missions in WWII. 4)Quickstart missions. Fly 6 missions ranging from landing a crippled B-17, to shooting down P-51s in an Fw-190. 5) Training missions. Fly 6 training missions including Taxi and takeoff, approach and landing,feathering/restarting an engine,bombing:good conditions, bombing:poor conditions, and gunnery training. As far as technical information, it is exact! The cockpits are exact, I know because I have a book with photos of all the cockpits of all the planes you can fly, plus I've been in a B-17. You can fly the following: B-17, P-51, P-47, P-38, Me 109, Fw 190 and the Me 262 jet. The rest of the B-17 is accurate too. The game also goes into detail with the Norden bombsight. The graphics are impressive! Overall this game is great, and I highly recommend it! It's worth the investment.
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