Wings of Prey: Special Edition

If you're interested in War Thunder but don't like its multiplayer focus and the massive grind, or you want to play Birds of Steel but don't have a console, this is a great alternative. You get a great selection of missions and planes to fly, with fun and rewarding gameplay. Plays great on a gamepad, and the ability to fully customise your controls, realism and difficulty makes it very flexible. It's not as good as Birds of Steel, which if you have a PS3 or 360, I highly recommend you check out, because that game has all the content from this one + a lot more, and is still very much a single player focused game (unlike War Thunder). But otherwise Wings of Prey is a very solid alternative, and a nice stepping stone between arcade flight games like Heroes of The Pacific and Ace Combat, and the simulations like IL2 and DCS.

Jeremy Soule's sound score is an aural feast. Filled with snare drums and graceful strings, it's reminiscient of any Hollywood blockbuster war movie soundtrack. And playing in 1440P the game is magnificently gorgeous. The difficulty, however, I just couldn't beat it. I got about 7 hours in when the missions simply got overwhelming. Dropping bombs to no effect on enemy vehicles, even in arcade mode where bombs were unlimited I kept failing the mission because I took too long. I'm a bit of a masochist when it comes to difficult games (I usually play at the most difficult level). But this game became tedious and frustrating. The storyline is interesting albeit cheesy at times (an English pilot offering a narrative in an American accent.) I would have liked to have been able to finish it, but alas, the game was too difficult, even on arcade mode.

(For the controls, a joystick or controller is necessary because it is not possible to fly with mouse and/or keyboard as the controls, even with the sensitivity low, handles horribly on keyboard.) Wings of Prey is more of a pseudo-flight sim as it’s an arcade flight game that is trying to be IL-2 1946 (it even steals the name for the Xbox version! ;) ). It has all the bells and whistles of a sim but it doesn’t actually have the flight models that a sim should have. If you want to play it as an arcade flight war game, it’s all well and good, but it’s not actually a sim of the planes used. In general, the plane’s characteristics and controls are not accurate as a sim should be in terms of flight models. When playing sim difficulty you can run your plane at full power and your engine will never overheat. Or, even better, you can play campaign on sim difficulty and have limited ammo and fuel and run out of both without having completed any objectives so the missions are not complete able with sim difficulty because they are not designed to be played as a sim. (Because there is no return line, as there is in Ace Combat, or a base to return to, as in an actual sim, once you’re out, you are out.) And you’re left there unable to complete the mission unless you bale out to get a new reloaded plane. Yes, baling out is the only way to reload your ammo. In another way that this is not a sim, as is mentioned by other reviews, the AI does not use the same flight models that the player uses. Regularly you will see bombers out-flying single-seat fighters, which is ridiculous because you can’t use real tactics against bombers to shoot them down. Not to mention, the bombers’ gunners are extremely accurate. Also, in dogfights you’ll notice that in both arcade and sim difficulty that the AI will never stall or run out of speed as they’re not bound to the same physics as the player, which is frustrating in either difficulty. Due to this, the AI will zip past you are stalling out.

it looks pretty good,has realistic and detailed looking planes.But this is not a realistic flight sim,it's an arcade game...although it has option to play it more realistic-ish but the missions often require you to shoot down more then 20 planes and don't expect friendly planes to help you...sometimes i feel like they're escorting the enemies,so playing the campaign in any mode other then Arcade is not possible to me.There is no mission builder in this game,the closest thing is "Training Mode" which only lets you select the planes you and the enemy fly, no way to set waypoints or objectives,it's really limited. Overall a fun game...play IL2 if you want a more realistic simulation

But not for flight sim hardcore purists. It's a realistic arcade game, more enjoyable, and more visually appealing than IŁ 1946 or new Dover. PLUS you get a soundtrack by maestro Jeremy Soule. Get yourself a decent joystick and play this forgotten gem!