B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th

I bought this game more or less when it first cae out. I loved this game because it`s basically unique today. You play the part of a B17 crew captain flying in missions over Nazi Europe and bombing stuff. What I really love about this game is the staff management. All`s fine at first as you fly into France, but then jerry attacks. Your gunners start shooting, you start getting flak. Your pilots are flying fine (you don`t even really need to fly they do it). But then one of your gunners is hit, you assign him away and take over yourself. Oh no, a pilot is badly wounded, you assign someone else there. ENGINE`S on fire, you take over and enter a steep dive until the flames go- hopefully. Then on to bombing the target if you haven`t been shot down. Then you have to head back through German and flak again! It`s this stuff which makes the game as you gel with the ship and the crew. Also, the B17 is a pretty complex beats in itself and you could just fly it like a real pilot! Graphics are obviously not up to today`s standards, but still good and gameplay is well above today`s. Recommended.

this is a very good game, tho there are a few bugs. the graphics are fine/acceptable for me, i can actually fly the plane. i didnt have any problems installing on windows 10 64 bit. the game is 20 years old but, the play is very good for its time and still is. i admitt like others the learning curve, remembering keyboards and such is a little hard at first for someone like me. after learning the little built in secrets it is a very fun game! The Bugs: 1.) personally i could do with out the crew animation parts like: "i don't want to die...help me ect... i understand the comrade and moral part of it but personally i could do with out it! 2.) when i swicth places/views like to go to outside view or flip back and forth from manual/computer the game always flips the computer mode back on and my landing gear automatically comes down/extends/deploys???? gets a little frustrating to quicly switch to manual and retract them only to have them extend again when computer mode comes back on again? maybe i am doing something wrong? takes a lot of time to map a joystick (maybe my joystick is messing the landing gear up?) other than that the game is very good and runs good! I like it better than IL-2! was going to give it 4 stars but considering its age and still a good game it certainly deserves a 5+ star. (LOL, dont forget to sign the mission book in briefing.)

This is the best B-17 simulator I have seen. There is a great attention to detail on each station. Pilot and Co-pilot cockpit buttons are all clickable so if you decide you can start the aircraft by yourself and then taxi-fly--return and land. The gunner positions are well made but the most fun is the bombardier position. This game had me looking at old WW2 Air Force training videos for using Norden sight.You can control each station or you could let the crew do their job and you just micro manage them. Highly recommended specially if you get it on sale. This game deserves a remaster.

Decent game that was fun to play for a while, but did suffer from some playability issues that were annoying as the game went on. More time in dev solving some issues would have gone a long way to make this a pretty good game. Pro’s Good job recreating the realism of bomber missions. As much or little game immersion as you want. Graphically, the game is pretty good. Decent flight simulator in the fighters, not as much in the bomber. Satisfying to take over the bombardier position, peer through clouds to find targets, make alignment corrections, and execute a good bombing run. It’s fun to take over gunner positions, although difficult to shoot anything down (hint – try ½ time compression). It’s exhilarating to chase the German planes in your fighter escort and fly right through the bomber formation, hoping not to run into anything. Con’s Focus on realism, but often to a fault. Too involved to perform simple tasks. Crew is supposed to evolve and improve if you “take command” of their tasks. Found this wasn’t the case. At the end of the campaign the nav was just as inept as he was on mission #1. Crew changes so often you don’t have a cohesive crew to improve. On-screen message time is accelerated when you have time acceleration on, which you do a lot. No time to click on messages to switch gunner positions, or read messages/alerts as they just blink on screen. Joystick mapping caused multiple game crashes for me. Needs an autosave features so you don’t have to redo the take-off and flight to the German coast if you get shot down or game crash. Take-off process is too long. Flying the B-17 isn’t fun. No visibility inside, so you end up flying via the chase plane view. Gets repetitive with not enough variety. Towards the end, I wanted to finish the remaining missions quickly, so I sabotaged the German fighters so they couldn't shoot down (or kamikaze) my bomber. You can’t shoot down your own German buddies (I tried),but you can make the pilots eject!

Good graphics and great full feel control of a heavy bomber. Takes a long time to become proficient enough to fly the plane without any use of the autopilot.