Wings of Prey tries to fill a larger niche than most flight simulators, but by doing so it fails fans of realistic flight simulators. Promo material for this game heavily emphasizes that it supports both arcade and simulator styles of play by offering a huge number of realism settings to balance the gameplay to your liking. Unfortunately, the game is balanced under the assumption you are playing with everything in full Arcade mode. AI controlled aircraft accelerate absurdly fast and almost always move at their maximum airspeed. You will need to fly with your throttle at full WEP at all times just to keep up with your flight leader. Since it can take you several minutes to reach your maximum airspeed during level flight when the realism settings are enabled, you have almost no hope of catching an enemy that is flying straight away from you. Although you can adjust the flight model for each mission, other realism settings are hardcoded into the missions. For example, the first mission in the campaign requires you to shoot down six HE-111's from your Hurricane Mk IIB. Since the idea of shooting down six bombers with a single load of underpowered .30 ammunition is laughable, you're given unlimited ammo for the mission. So much for realism. You can't adjust the AI difficulty for standalone or campaign missions, and the AI's combat prowess also is balanced as if you have the settings on full arcade. The more difficult AI opponents literally never miss and will kill you with a single quarter-second burst to the canopy as soon as you are in front of them *every single time*. Attempting combat in these missions is pointless. Enemy bombers always fly in a perfectly straight path and never undertake evasive maneuvers. However, their tail gunners have terrifying accuracy and your screen shakes violently every time you take a hit (no matter how insignificant the hit was) so it is almost impossible to shoot down a bomber. There is no time compression for skipping downtime.
SWAT 4 is a decent tactical shooter but does not hold up well against its predecessor, the almighty SWAT 3: CQB. I'm a huge fan of tactical shooters and had high expectations for SWAT 4, but it's been a disappointment. I don't want to spend a lot of time summarizing the gameplay, which you can read about in a magazine review; to keep it brief, this is a squad-level tactical shooter with a heavy emphasis on police gear, tactics, and procedures. SWAT 4 is certainly a graphical upgrade compared to its 1999 predecessor, but the gameplay seems to have taken a step backward. The squad command interface has been butchered; the highly efficient number-key based command system has been replaced by default with a horrendously slow and clunky mouse-driven system that you can't realistically use in combat. There is a "classic" command option but it doesn't work like in SWAT 3. Realism fails in many small ways. SWAT 3 had excellent AI for its time. SWAT 4 is mostly a step backwards. Suspects run around like headless chickens. Officers stand in doorways getting shot repeatedly while they prepare to throw a flashbang. Officers get stuck on corners and sometimes don't carry out your orders for no reason. Although SWAT 3 had the subtitle "Close Quarters Battle", that belongs more appropriately to SWAT 4, where you will never engage a suspect at a range of more than 10 feet. Move faster than a grandmother and your accuracy drops to 0, but it hardly matters when you've practically got your gun jammed in the suspect's mouth. Combat is clunky and awkward at these close ranges. Where SWAT 3 gave you the glorious feeling of adapting skillfully to an evolving situation, SWAT 4 collapses into a mess whenever bullets start flying. SWAT 3 had good animations for the officers, but in SWAT 4 they stand like they have sticks up their rears. Also, who wears a balaclava with their nose uncovered? Also, your characters visibly do not have gas masks but are somehow immune to CS gas.
