I will not be buying this game from GOG because I already own the DVD but if you do not already have this game I cannot recommend it too highly! I would not really call this a "Good _Old_ Game" as it is still in the shops and is quite capable of stretching a modern PC and graphics card to its limits when played at high levels of detail and high screen resolution. The IL-2 game series still has a very large active online fan base, one of the best sites to try for user missions, aircraft "skins" and other goodies is "Mission For Today" at http://www.mission4today.com. This edition consists of the content of all the games in the IL-2 series since the second one, "IL-2 Forgotton Battles" and contains an absolutely staggering number of flyable aircraft. If you own the very first IL-2 Sturmovik game, you can copy missions from that game into this one and they work fine. On the most realistic setting this game is the next best thing to actually flying a WWII aircraft so it is no suprise that it is very popular amongst real life pilots and aircraft enthusiasts. When I was lucky enough to really take to the air (and take the controls) in an ex-RAF light aircraft, the layout of the cockpit and the function of the controls was all so familiar from my IL-2 experience. The only thing that you do not get in the game is the sinking feeling as you are pushed back into the seat by G-forces as you do barrel rolls and loops! The only downside to this game is that it is too realistic! Even taking off and landing takes skill, practice and patience, then you have to practice gunnery, bombing and strafing before you have a hope of being effective in combat. If you just want to whizz around and blow stuff up I would probably recommend something like the Descent or Freespace series instead.
I have fond memories of playing Descent I, Shareware on my 486 PC years ago. I have little experience of Descent 2 but I am told it is every bit as good as the original so I highly recommend buying this package. You can run this old MS-DOS game using the DOSBox DOS emulation software on a modern PC (i.e. XP or Vista) and the DOSBox software is included in this installer. Alternatively you can go to the website of the Descent Rebirth project (http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/) and download a new Open Source game engine for free, which will allow these two titles to be played without DOSBox on a Windows, Linux or Mac computer. The new engine allows the original game content (instructions are provided for copying the game content from an existing installation) to be played using the modern Open-GL graphics specification allowing stunning resolutions such as 1600x1200 and effects such as Tri-Linear filtering as seen in modern games. A great new look with the same playability of the original game... The only gripe I have with this package is that the downloaded installer must be run on a Windows system to extract the game files. There is no way to manually unpack the installer EXE file to get at the game content, e.g. to manually install on a Linux system using the Linux port of DOSBox or the "Rebirth" game engine. If you are a Linux-only user you may need to run this installer on a friend's Windows machine so you can archive a copy of the extracted game directories.
I have fond memories of playing Descent I, Shareware on my 486 PC years ago. I have little experience of Descent 2 but I am told it is every bit as good as the original so I highly recommend buying this package. You can run this old MS-DOS game using the DOSBox DOS emulation software on a modern PC (i.e. XP or Vista) and the DOSBox software is included in this installer. Alternatively you can go to the website of the Descent Rebirth project (http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/) and download a new Open Source game engine for free, which will allow these two titles to be played without DOSBox on a Windows, Linux or Mac computer. The new engine allows the original game content (instructions are provided for copying the game content from an existing installation) to be played using the modern Open-GL graphics specification allowing stunning resolutions such as 1600x1200 and effects such as Tri-Linear filtering as seen in modern games. A great new look with the same playability of the original game... The only gripe I have with this package is that the downloaded installer must be run on a Windows system to extract the game files. There is no way to manually unpack the installer EXE file to get at the game content, e.g. to manually install on a Linux system using the Linux port of DOSBox or the "Rebirth" game engine. If you are a Linux-only user you may need to run this installer on a friend's Windows machine so you can archive a copy of the extracted game directories.
I have fond memories of playing Descent I, Shareware on my 486 PC years ago. I have little experience of Descent 2 but I am told it is every bit as good as the original so I highly recommend buying this package. You can run this old MS-DOS game using the DOSBox DOS emulation software on a modern PC (i.e. XP or Vista) and the DOSBox software is included in this installer. Alternatively you can go to the website of the Descent Rebirth project (http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/) and download a new Open Source game engine for free, which will allow these two titles to be played without DOSBox on a Windows, Linux or Mac computer. The new engine allows the original game content (instructions are provided for copying the game content from an existing installation) to be played using the modern Open-GL graphics specification allowing stunning resolutions such as 1600x1200 and effects such as Tri-Linear filtering as seen in modern games. A great new look with the same playability of the original game... The only gripe I have with this package is that the downloaded installer must be run on a Windows system to extract the game files. There is no way to manually unpack the installer EXE file to get at the game content, e.g. to manually install on a Linux system using the Linux port of DOSBox or the "Rebirth" game engine. If you are a Linux-only user you may need to run this installer on a friend's Windows machine so you can archive a copy of the extracted game directories.
