The History Channel: WWII Battle of Britain

Rating:
Summary: Just plain awful
Review: I bought this game looking for a fun alternative to intensive flight simulators AND simple arcade style games... I thought it would be a good compromise. Unfortunately, It's not good in either respect. Do yourself a favor, don't spend anything on it. Soooo boring, it's tedious and the graphics are terrible.

And as far as multiplayer benefits, (free access, etc.) once I played the game I understood why. Nobody would pay for this garbage.

Rating:
Summary: Begin your combat flightsim career here!
Review: In the old days (actually fairly recently) the biggest selling PC game category was flightsimulators.

Here's why its not that way any more: Expert AI, frustrations in acquiring basic situational awareness, difficult takeoffs & landings, expensive multiplayer fees, rude or cheating online opponents, high minimum system requirements.

But on the other hand, arcade combat sims are just unsatisfying pablum driving away newbies.

This new combat sim, The History Channel Battle of Britain: World War II 1940, now comes to rescue the industry!

Keypoint: behind this sim is the Warbirds III engine. Yes, Warbirds with its reputation of online friendliness, 0 cost MP fees, and low system requirements. But its a real sim, not an arcade.

This lowpriced package comes with extensive tutorials. And in all missions and even the campaign there is an always available option for temporarily switching over to automatic AI control of the player's plane. For example to let the beginner change views to become better aware of the entire ongoing situation, or to learn by observation specific techniques such as landings.

Perhaps professional reviews such as Bruce Geryk's, over at GameSpot, says all this and more better than I. Indeed rave reviews from mny critics for this instructional package. It will entertain you no end while taking you from beginner to offline or Internet top gun.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth it!!
Review: The reviewer above who slammed this one must have a different product to mine :)

I play and enjoy many such titles including EAW, SDOE, CFS1/2, IL2, & JWW2F - and of late, mostly CFS3 and IL2FB. Overall, in my book, HC BoB is up there with the best of them, in its own way. It's good looking, realistic (but can be made simple if you're a casual or a newbie), and a LOT of FUN!!

The graphics are rather good, especially if your system lets you crank up the image quality. A few plane paintschemes are not great (eg Spit 1, tho you can d/l some super stuff from WB fansites) but many are outstanding. The Hurricane 1 is very neat tho it looks to be based on a BoB film aircraft, with fat, white (& I think fictitious) squadron codes and a light blue underside - looks pretty good though with super panel detail. Urban textures are very bland indeed, rural are much better. Overall the HC BoB world looks rather real - more so to my eye than the neat but rather bright and artificial world of Fighter Ace 3 - and you can turn up the gamma in-game if you think it's a bit dark. Not quite up to IL2 or CFS3 but as good as, and in some ways better than, CFS2.

Most of the sim's limitations stem from it being derived closely from a sim - Warbirds 2004 - designed mainly for online play. You can't control or ask help from other planes. They will "talk" to you a lot, which is good - but in a text window with no sound - and they "speak" in modern terms eg if you get a kill you get "WTG [callsign]! which I guess means "Way To Go!".

The instant action missions include a good variety (& can play out a bit differently each time) - you can even defend a channel convoy from a destroyer's AA guns (albeit it's a US Fletcher class!). The experience of being on a ship fighting for your life under vicious & sustained air attack from Ju87s & Ju88s has to be experienced to be believed, it's at least as good as Destroyer Command (even if the Stukas don't dive bomb nearly steeply enough).

Overall, flight models seem very good at max setting. Apart from no padlock(!) the view systems are comprehensive. Cockpits are nearly all 3d and not to IL2 standard but more than good enough. Rear snapview is especially well done, just like craning your neck and looking over your shoulder to one side, great for checking six.

Sound and visual effects are, overall, rather well done and strangely immersive, well up with the best of them. EG you see very visible but not overdone flashes for bullet strikes which look spookily like real-life gun camera footage. Some engine sounds can be a bit wimpy to my ear but on the good side they give you a good audio cue to your energy state (you can really hear the "e" bleeding by the pitch change!). Makes you think, "Must loosen up on this tight turn or I'll end up low and slow!". I usually do anyway!!

A positive of the WB2004 ancestry is that you get all its terrains and its planeset (as at release date). So, using the "free flight" option, you can fly a huge number of different planes - eg Japanese Zeke, Oscar, Tony, Val, Kate, Betty, US Mustang (A-36 + P-51B&D), T'bolt, Mitchell, Liberator, Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, various P-39s, British Mosquito (NF2, FB6, B4) & later-war Spits/Hurris (no Tiffie or Lanc tho), German 262, 110, 109F/G/K, FW190 (A&D), Stuka (D&G), He111, Ju88, even a Ju52 that drops paratroops. Yes, there's bombers - some nice touches here, eg you can fly or man guns or bomb, including torpedos or rockets, & dropping parachute-retarded bombs in low level strikes. By using "dot" commands in addition to the free flightinterface, you can set it up for bomber intercept, air combat etc, and even specify opponent type 9not quite as flexible as IL2's QMB though, WB2004 is better here). You can even drive and gun from several tanks and halftracks! There's even a few WW1 planes. Terrains include a bigger Europe, Phillppines, Malta, & Tunisia.

Manual is very limited indeed but this is so easy to pick up and enjoy at any level, that's no big deal. My big gripes are the rather limited number of campaign missions and the fact the RAF campaign switches you from Hurri to Spit and back. But these gripes pale when set alongside the many positives.

You can get this extra, non-BoB stuff and more for free by d/l'ing WB2004 from totalsims.com but at the modest price the BoB planes and campaigns are very well worth it. On this basis I'll be looking out for their upcoming tanksim "Battle of the Bulge" and WW1 flight sim "Skyknights" due out soon. Well done iEntertainment and Activision Value!