Well, it's very likely that a 2025 potato can run Crysis, even this revamped version. It's a decent enough shooter, but its gameplay is still trapped in 2007.
Serve the Emperor today in this glorious new revamp of the best RTS ever, for tomorrow you may be dead.
This sim is created by the original Il-2 veterans, now known as Gaijin. They enhanced the old Il-2 engine in a lot of ways in preparations for creating War Thunder, and released this game on PS3 and PC. As such, it got "squeezed in" between the releases of Il-2 and WT, and was pretty much ignored, which is a shame, because this is a very nice-looking survey simulation packed with aircraft and features. If you're fully into switchology I'd recommend you skip this and just head on off to IL-2: Box which has all the rivets you want, but if you want an offline War Thunder-level sim, WoP pretty much nails everything you could want. Highly recommended even in 2025.
Combine "Brave New World" with "A Clockwork Orange" and you get this nifty little survival game.
1998 was a remarkable time for flight simulations - in that year, we got three very good ones: MSCFS, Jane's WW2 Fighters, and the best of them all: European Air War. The mid-to-late 90s were also a time when flight sim designers had yet to jump down the endless rabbit hole of simulating systems at navel-gazing levels (with SSI's Su-27 Flanker being the main exception and a portend of Things to Come.) Flight sims were still for the most part kick the tires, light the fires yank-and-bank affairs that catered to the inner fighter pilot in all of us. All effort was made to get the player into the mood of the simulated time - fancy interactive screens instead of endless lines of boring text. Of course, much of this effort was made because the actual 3D presentation tech wasn't up to snuff, but by 1998 we had 3D accelerator cards (EAW supported 3dFX Glide and DirectX) that pushed visuals further into believability. Anyway, enough of the old "I wuz there, m8" bollox from an old sim grog. Old sims are hard to go back to in most cases. Either their unsophistication in presentation, or their unsophistication in simulation just makes them a no go beyond a nostalgic pass. EAW is an exception. Basically brought to creation by the efforts of one master programmer and designer, EAW is still worth the flight, particularly when, say, IL-2:BoX's switchery buggery and unforgiving "realism" gets to be too much. You also get to fly proper escort missions with more than like 4 bombers at a time. GOG did the work here and has integrated the necessary community patch (V1.28) and wrappers (DirectX, 3dFX, and networking) to ensure this old girl runs more-or-less flawlessly on modern computers. For those in the know, EAW could be a right hassle to get running both before and after the source release, but it's basically click-and-play here. All EAW enthusiasts should pick this up as a clean V1.28 base that requires no fiddling. Younger sim pups should pick this up, too.
THE GOOD: + Classic old-school shooter action in the Star Wars expanded universe + Great atmosphere and iconic locations THE BAD: - Old-school level design; not necessarily in appearance (which is good, considering the game's age), but lacking modern touches to make the player's progress easier - Old-school unforgiving difficulty - Clumsy "Force" controls THE UGLY ! One of the worst, notoriously-bad FPS levels ever created: "sniper town". A test of player patience, not skill. Drops the game to two stars simply for being there, regardless of the game's other strengths. It's that bad. TECHNICAL NOTE: Old-but-robust Quake 3 engine powered; handles widescreen well with .cfg tweaking; doesn't run out of the box with Intel integrated graphics (modern Intel graphics are more than powerful enough, but Intel has garbage OpenGL drivers), this is fixable with OpenGL-DirectX wrapper.
Run over pedestrians, drive like a bastard against other vicious opponents, still-great-for-the-time crash physics: the core of the awesome Carma gameplay remains. What is unwelcome are these ridiculous missions between free races, and the introduction of stick figure polygon pedestrians. Carma 1 was pure delightful anarchy and chaos, Carma 2 is slightly better tech and slightly worse gameplay.
I'm sure that someone will write a much longer and more detailed review, but it boils down to this: Wargame:EE is that rarest of beasts: it's a RTS that folks who don't like RTS games will probably enjoy, and it's a real-time game that will please turn-based wargamers. It's all Cold War tactics and action, with very little micro. Although the multiplayer has been made completely obsolete with the release of AirLand Battle, the brutal single-player campaign is still an excellent training ground for the even more brutal MP action. It may take time to bounce off of EE's learning curve (although the actual mechanics of the game are simple) but it is very, very worth it. Company of Heroes was my favorite RTS before EE, it's EE/ALB now. Five stars, two thumbs up, highly recommended.
