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Article Type: Review
Article Date: October 29, 2001
There are times when you want to just blast the stuffing out of something and not worry about the finer tunings of the machinery involved. Or maybe, you're on the road a lot and the old laptop is the only PC gaming device available but it won't run those more recent and sophisticated combat simming games. In either instance, there are some alternatives. Some folks call them value priced games, others simply call them shovelware. Here is a look at three WWII titles that fit this descripion. Whether you call them value priced or shovelware, we'll let you decide for yourself.
So you want to blast away at the Luftwaffe and bomb the snot out of the Rhineland back in 1943 without all that pesky flying, navigating and other tedious housekeeping stuff? Well, this may be a title you can get into.
The disc comes with a CD cover eight page manual that covers installation, settings, play and a small section on troubleshooting hints and tips. For keyboard commands you are referred to the online help file. Installation weighs in at a fairly slim 270 MB.
Once you start the game you are presented with a menu screen that resembles the interior of a WWII era bomber that allows access to Play, Options, Information (on the aircraft in the game), High Scores, Credits and Quit.
The options screen allows changing of primary video, graphics resolution from 640x480 up to 1024 x 768, sound on or off (but not for the menu music), full screen vs. windowed, detail on/off, joystick on/off, invert y, (for mouse, but works well with joystick), and the option to change keyboard commands. There is no scroll bar on that area, as this is a jump in there and shoot things, not a search for the right key game.
If you want to check out the specs on you aircraft, or any of your potential adversaries, the options screen will display a somehat crude looking picture of the craft and a brief run down of its specs. With adversary aircraft, there's an emphasis on what they will present in terms of a challenge to you as a defender of your flying fortress.
Once you have things setup, you click on Play and input your name and bomber name and get a briefing on your first target. Pay particular attention to the picture of the target in the briefing as this will help during the bombing run as there are other areas that may look similar as you peer through the so-called "Norden" bombsight. The target areas get more and more complex as you work your way through the missions. So, once you have that target area picture burned into your mind's eye, it's time to get busy.
A quick loading screen in your chosen resolution puts you in a gunner's position. You start out in the top turret. If you're not sure what gunner position you're sitting at, just check the plane icon with the dots on the lower right corner of the screen. The three colors for the indicators are yellow for manned position, green for unmanned, and red for position destroyed. I tried shooting using keyboard, mouse and joystick. Needless to say I got much better numbers using the joystick, but my USB seemed to cause major bog-down on occasion. Chatter on the intercom ranges from useful, "Bandits at 3 O’clock high" to frivolous, "Come on, closer, closer…", but can help with immersion. Blasting away yields good sounds from your .50 calibers, followed by the clink of brass when you release the trigger. Leading a target is emulated. When you hit a fighter it will trail smoke, go out of control, then explode in a satisfactory way.
Listening for a call from the pilot about approaching the target is the only intro you'll get before you are abruptly yanked from your gunnery duty to the bombsight. Left and right movements of the aircraft are your aiming inputs. Shaking due to flak in the area is also modeled. Once the crosshairs center up on the target, hitting the trigger shows impacts instantly. Even though the bombs appear to glide forward with your plane, you'll want to release dead center on the target, as pre-releasing them will get you a miss.
After bombs are gone, you are back into the gunnery station watching the B-17s in your flight turn off target. You never see them fire at enemies and you can't hit them with your own guns, but they are comforting being out there nonetheless. As you egress the area you will get an idea of the effectiveness of your bomb run by what is said by the AI. If you don't hear a word odds are good that you didn't get it.
As you depart the target area you must deal with the departure committee of enemy fighters for a bit. Shortly after that, you are then presented with your score for the mission and total score for your tour of duty. You can then choose to press on with your next mission or depart to see the top scores.
Overall, B-17 is a fun experience and is good practice for honing your lead shooting skills. Only complaint is that the transition from gun position to bombsight is a bit too abrupt at times.
In an obvious move to cash in on the movie craze, Pacific Warriors added the Beyond Pearl Harbor to the title to catch the eye of cost conscious arcade buyers. Though it does have combat flight sim displayed on the spine, a quick peek on the reverse reveals the third person perspective of the old coin operated arcade shoot-em-ups.
Installation was a breeze, and consists of a small-ish 75MB installation footprint. A two page listing inside the front cover goes over installation, customizable and fixed controls, a bit of troubleshooting, and refers you to the PDF formatted manual on CD for more details. The sixteen page online manual describes the different aspects of the game along with tips for gameplay. As in the last game there is very little in the way of controls as this is not a deep simulation. I did, however, find it curiously addicting.
Once installed and started, you are presented with the options to start a game, change your settings, view credits, exit or multi-player. I did not try the multiplayer options and there is little in either manual to say whether this is co-operative or head-to-head or both.
When start game is chosen, five "theme" choices are displayed but as a first time flyer you have only the first theme available. Each theme gives you a different aircraft to fly and the enemies get tougher as you progress to each new theme. There is no cursor pointer on any of the intro screens, you just have to use the arrow keys and each selection pops out at you. With theme one highlighted, pressing ENTER throws you behind a Corsair-esque aircraft. I again tried keyboard, mouse, and joystick on desktops and laptops, with joystick, of course, being the preferred input method.
As you enter the mission a quick briefing pops up and is quickly dispatched by hitting the F10 key. The briefing has a map overview of the area and a description of your task. The map does not update and the description is similar in all cases that I saw. The best way to figure out what to do is simply to follow the galvanized metal pointer at the top of the screen and look for the red boxes around assigned targets. I quickly found that if I targeted all ground forces first, then dealt with the air threats, that this was the best strategy.
There are five missions per theme, followed by a "Boss" for the last mission in the theme. Once all targets, ground and air, are eliminated another area of the map opens up with new ground and air targets, or the completion of the level is accomplished. When certain targets are taken out a power-up icon may be revealed. You must fly over the floating icon to get the power-up. These items are invaluable in assisting with elimination of the tougher areas. Torpedoes for anti-shipping, rockets for AAA guns, even an area effect bomb (something like a tactical nuke) can be found. Some powerups add an increased power and lethality to existing weapons such as the machine guns. Level one machine guns are comparatively slow-firing, low-damage, but if another machine gun power-up is found, the damage dished out is effectively doubled. If a third is found, the rate of fire is doubled by having two guns on each side of the aircraft.
As I said, each theme has its own aircraft. A twin-tailed P-38 wanna-be graces theme 3, while a float plane equipped fighter bomber is depicted in another. High-speed runs on all ground targets, followed by confrontations with the Japanese aircraft will usually yield a successful confrontation. Once the ground batteries are down, I would that you go on up and provoke the aircraft; zoom down into the valleys and listen to them slam into the mountainous islands. Once the enemy air forces have been whittled down to singles or pairs, I found that slowing down to match speed made picking them off much easier. In desperation, the enemy aircraft will resort to their most successful air attack strategy which seems to be colliding with you.
Overall, this was a fun little game capable of running on just about any system I threw it on. The graphics are very nice, there were few hesitations even on a lower-end laptop, and not a single crash to desktop all the way through to completion of the game. A combat flight sim it isn't, but a fine diversion, and a gunnery practice toy with unusually addictive qualities it is.
Having never been a big fan of the FPS genre, this was a title I was a little leery of. It is your basic Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem style shooter set in newly occupied France during the invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces.
All missions are strictly solo. The stories overview says that you are one of many, but the only co-conspirators you'll find have already cashed in their chips. You will also not find any type of multi-player, as this is strictly a one person first person shooter.
Installation went well with a somewhat larger 295 MB install footprint. The usual setup options are available with screen resolution, sounds, and a non-dropdown selection method for changing joystick and keyboard commands. There was a v1.1 patch released that addressed multiple issues including USB joystick support. On one of my Windows 2000 laptops the game did not see the USB joystick, but the 98SE installed version did. Even on that one the joystick method was not acceptable due to drift, twitchiness, and other things. I probably could have monkeyed with it and gotten it to work, but the mouse and keyboard method got me through all the missions.
When the New Game option is selected, you find yourself in a glider with flak pounding the air. An order to bail out is heard and you see yourself riding the silk elevator down to a countryside filled with hedgerows. From each mission's insertion point you fight your way through landscapes and towns to an unspecified end point where you complete the mission. Most are very maze-like, as most FPS's that I've seen are.
The folks that are trying to stop you are haggard looking Nazis that are armed with a predictable variety of weapons. Officers have pistols, most of the rest have carbines or machine guns. There is a sprinkling of grenade-tossers out there also just to keep you on your toes. If you see one of those potato mashers arc into view, or hear them clink around, hauling butt is a good plan! They also have the odd armored vehicle that will toss explosive death at you. These are my favorite targets and almost make the game worthwhile. Launching a bazooka round at them leads to a very pleasing turret-popping pyrotechnics display.
The bazooka is the most effective weapon you command. Other weapons at your disposal include a K-Bar knife (for the truly suicidal who want the ultimate challenge) a pistol of the .45 ACP variety, an M1 carbine, an MP3 submachine gun, the aforementioned bazooka, good ol' pineapple grenades, and land mines. With this assortment of weapons of meager destruction you set about clearing the way for the soon to arrive Normandy invasion force. Reconnaissance by fire with the bazooka and/or grenades can be marginally effective as there are area triggers that create Nazis where there were none previously.
The graphics are also marginally effective. They remind me of the last FPS I explored to any great degree and that was way back in the Duke Nukem days. To that end, it is probably not a good thing that I was able to finish this particular title in a few hours as I am a neophyte to this genre. The two bonus maps included with the patch were a bit more unsettling, but my desire to conquer them was outweighed by a ho-hum sort of attitude. It may be my lack of enthusiasm of FPS’s in general, or this one in particular, but it only had a few moments of real fun factor to it for me; purchase this one at your own risk.
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Three World War II Titles
by Aaron "Spectre" WatsonArticle Type: Review
Article Date: October 29, 2001
There are times when you want to just blast the stuffing out of something and not worry about the finer tunings of the machinery involved. Or maybe, you're on the road a lot and the old laptop is the only PC gaming device available but it won't run those more recent and sophisticated combat simming games. In either instance, there are some alternatives. Some folks call them value priced games, others simply call them shovelware. Here is a look at three WWII titles that fit this descripion. Whether you call them value priced or shovelware, we'll let you decide for yourself.
So you want to blast away at the Luftwaffe and bomb the snot out of the Rhineland back in 1943 without all that pesky flying, navigating and other tedious housekeeping stuff? Well, this may be a title you can get into.
The disc comes with a CD cover eight page manual that covers installation, settings, play and a small section on troubleshooting hints and tips. For keyboard commands you are referred to the online help file. Installation weighs in at a fairly slim 270 MB.
 |
| B-17 Gunner menu |
Once you start the game you are presented with a menu screen that resembles the interior of a WWII era bomber that allows access to Play, Options, Information (on the aircraft in the game), High Scores, Credits and Quit.
 |
| Choose your settings |
The options screen allows changing of primary video, graphics resolution from 640x480 up to 1024 x 768, sound on or off (but not for the menu music), full screen vs. windowed, detail on/off, joystick on/off, invert y, (for mouse, but works well with joystick), and the option to change keyboard commands. There is no scroll bar on that area, as this is a jump in there and shoot things, not a search for the right key game.
 |
| A picture and description of your aircraft. |
If you want to check out the specs on you aircraft, or any of your potential adversaries, the options screen will display a somehat crude looking picture of the craft and a brief run down of its specs. With adversary aircraft, there's an emphasis on what they will present in terms of a challenge to you as a defender of your flying fortress.
 |
| The target briefing |
Once you have things setup, you click on Play and input your name and bomber name and get a briefing on your first target. Pay particular attention to the picture of the target in the briefing as this will help during the bombing run as there are other areas that may look similar as you peer through the so-called "Norden" bombsight. The target areas get more and more complex as you work your way through the missions. So, once you have that target area picture burned into your mind's eye, it's time to get busy.
 |
| Note the position indicators |
A quick loading screen in your chosen resolution puts you in a gunner's position. You start out in the top turret. If you're not sure what gunner position you're sitting at, just check the plane icon with the dots on the lower right corner of the screen. The three colors for the indicators are yellow for manned position, green for unmanned, and red for position destroyed. I tried shooting using keyboard, mouse and joystick. Needless to say I got much better numbers using the joystick, but my USB seemed to cause major bog-down on occasion. Chatter on the intercom ranges from useful, "Bandits at 3 O’clock high" to frivolous, "Come on, closer, closer…", but can help with immersion. Blasting away yields good sounds from your .50 calibers, followed by the clink of brass when you release the trigger. Leading a target is emulated. When you hit a fighter it will trail smoke, go out of control, then explode in a satisfactory way.
 |
| A smoking target |
Listening for a call from the pilot about approaching the target is the only intro you'll get before you are abruptly yanked from your gunnery duty to the bombsight. Left and right movements of the aircraft are your aiming inputs. Shaking due to flak in the area is also modeled. Once the crosshairs center up on the target, hitting the trigger shows impacts instantly. Even though the bombs appear to glide forward with your plane, you'll want to release dead center on the target, as pre-releasing them will get you a miss.
After bombs are gone, you are back into the gunnery station watching the B-17s in your flight turn off target. You never see them fire at enemies and you can't hit them with your own guns, but they are comforting being out there nonetheless. As you egress the area you will get an idea of the effectiveness of your bomb run by what is said by the AI. If you don't hear a word odds are good that you didn't get it.
 |
| Last mission on the left, total on the right |
As you depart the target area you must deal with the departure committee of enemy fighters for a bit. Shortly after that, you are then presented with your score for the mission and total score for your tour of duty. You can then choose to press on with your next mission or depart to see the top scores.
Overall, B-17 is a fun experience and is good practice for honing your lead shooting skills. Only complaint is that the transition from gun position to bombsight is a bit too abrupt at times.
In an obvious move to cash in on the movie craze, Pacific Warriors added the Beyond Pearl Harbor to the title to catch the eye of cost conscious arcade buyers. Though it does have combat flight sim displayed on the spine, a quick peek on the reverse reveals the third person perspective of the old coin operated arcade shoot-em-ups.
Installation was a breeze, and consists of a small-ish 75MB installation footprint. A two page listing inside the front cover goes over installation, customizable and fixed controls, a bit of troubleshooting, and refers you to the PDF formatted manual on CD for more details. The sixteen page online manual describes the different aspects of the game along with tips for gameplay. As in the last game there is very little in the way of controls as this is not a deep simulation. I did, however, find it curiously addicting.
 |
| Options screen |
Once installed and started, you are presented with the options to start a game, change your settings, view credits, exit or multi-player. I did not try the multiplayer options and there is little in either manual to say whether this is co-operative or head-to-head or both.
When start game is chosen, five "theme" choices are displayed but as a first time flyer you have only the first theme available. Each theme gives you a different aircraft to fly and the enemies get tougher as you progress to each new theme. There is no cursor pointer on any of the intro screens, you just have to use the arrow keys and each selection pops out at you. With theme one highlighted, pressing ENTER throws you behind a Corsair-esque aircraft. I again tried keyboard, mouse, and joystick on desktops and laptops, with joystick, of course, being the preferred input method.
 |
| Goals for the mission |
As you enter the mission a quick briefing pops up and is quickly dispatched by hitting the F10 key. The briefing has a map overview of the area and a description of your task. The map does not update and the description is similar in all cases that I saw. The best way to figure out what to do is simply to follow the galvanized metal pointer at the top of the screen and look for the red boxes around assigned targets. I quickly found that if I targeted all ground forces first, then dealt with the air threats, that this was the best strategy.
 |
| One of 5 Bosses |
There are five missions per theme, followed by a "Boss" for the last mission in the theme. Once all targets, ground and air, are eliminated another area of the map opens up with new ground and air targets, or the completion of the level is accomplished. When certain targets are taken out a power-up icon may be revealed. You must fly over the floating icon to get the power-up. These items are invaluable in assisting with elimination of the tougher areas. Torpedoes for anti-shipping, rockets for AAA guns, even an area effect bomb (something like a tactical nuke) can be found. Some powerups add an increased power and lethality to existing weapons such as the machine guns. Level one machine guns are comparatively slow-firing, low-damage, but if another machine gun power-up is found, the damage dished out is effectively doubled. If a third is found, the rate of fire is doubled by having two guns on each side of the aircraft.
 |
| A bi-plane with Floats! |
As I said, each theme has its own aircraft. A twin-tailed P-38 wanna-be graces theme 3, while a float plane equipped fighter bomber is depicted in another. High-speed runs on all ground targets, followed by confrontations with the Japanese aircraft will usually yield a successful confrontation. Once the ground batteries are down, I would that you go on up and provoke the aircraft; zoom down into the valleys and listen to them slam into the mountainous islands. Once the enemy air forces have been whittled down to singles or pairs, I found that slowing down to match speed made picking them off much easier. In desperation, the enemy aircraft will resort to their most successful air attack strategy which seems to be colliding with you.
Overall, this was a fun little game capable of running on just about any system I threw it on. The graphics are very nice, there were few hesitations even on a lower-end laptop, and not a single crash to desktop all the way through to completion of the game. A combat flight sim it isn't, but a fine diversion, and a gunnery practice toy with unusually addictive qualities it is.
Having never been a big fan of the FPS genre, this was a title I was a little leery of. It is your basic Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem style shooter set in newly occupied France during the invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces.
All missions are strictly solo. The stories overview says that you are one of many, but the only co-conspirators you'll find have already cashed in their chips. You will also not find any type of multi-player, as this is strictly a one person first person shooter.
Installation went well with a somewhat larger 295 MB install footprint. The usual setup options are available with screen resolution, sounds, and a non-dropdown selection method for changing joystick and keyboard commands. There was a v1.1 patch released that addressed multiple issues including USB joystick support. On one of my Windows 2000 laptops the game did not see the USB joystick, but the 98SE installed version did. Even on that one the joystick method was not acceptable due to drift, twitchiness, and other things. I probably could have monkeyed with it and gotten it to work, but the mouse and keyboard method got me through all the missions.
 |
| Your ride in plummets behind you |
When the New Game option is selected, you find yourself in a glider with flak pounding the air. An order to bail out is heard and you see yourself riding the silk elevator down to a countryside filled with hedgerows. From each mission's insertion point you fight your way through landscapes and towns to an unspecified end point where you complete the mission. Most are very maze-like, as most FPS's that I've seen are.
The folks that are trying to stop you are haggard looking Nazis that are armed with a predictable variety of weapons. Officers have pistols, most of the rest have carbines or machine guns. There is a sprinkling of grenade-tossers out there also just to keep you on your toes. If you see one of those potato mashers arc into view, or hear them clink around, hauling butt is a good plan! They also have the odd armored vehicle that will toss explosive death at you. These are my favorite targets and almost make the game worthwhile. Launching a bazooka round at them leads to a very pleasing turret-popping pyrotechnics display.
 |
| Pop goes the Nazi |
The bazooka is the most effective weapon you command. Other weapons at your disposal include a K-Bar knife (for the truly suicidal who want the ultimate challenge) a pistol of the .45 ACP variety, an M1 carbine, an MP3 submachine gun, the aforementioned bazooka, good ol' pineapple grenades, and land mines. With this assortment of weapons of meager destruction you set about clearing the way for the soon to arrive Normandy invasion force. Reconnaissance by fire with the bazooka and/or grenades can be marginally effective as there are area triggers that create Nazis where there were none previously.
 |
| Gamma-Corrected Half-tracks |
The graphics are also marginally effective. They remind me of the last FPS I explored to any great degree and that was way back in the Duke Nukem days. To that end, it is probably not a good thing that I was able to finish this particular title in a few hours as I am a neophyte to this genre. The two bonus maps included with the patch were a bit more unsettling, but my desire to conquer them was outweighed by a ho-hum sort of attitude. It may be my lack of enthusiasm of FPS’s in general, or this one in particular, but it only had a few moments of real fun factor to it for me; purchase this one at your own risk.
Conclusion
Well, there we have it. A look into some value-priced programs with a WWII theme. None are contenders to unseat IL-2 Sturmovik as a mega-hit, but that is not why they were produced anyway. One was a filler between projects, the others were small projects that kept the programmers’ enthusiasm alive until the next big project. None will break the budget for the majority of gamers in either the price of the software or for required hardware as both are relatively low. All were, to varying degrees, a pleasant diversion. Printer Friendly