EPTThe graphics are absolutely stunning. They're very close to being photo-realistic and if you look outside at the ground below you, it actually looks quite similar to what you would see in a real aircraft. The clouds and the water of the English Channel also look gorgeous. The aircraft themselves handle beautifully, the flight mechanics are really realistic. The game engine was well made and the modders behind the patches know their stuff (using actual historical graphs for their work, btw). The aircraft are historical replicates. The game is also quite realistic. It's very easy to blow up your engine; you can overheat it or overrev it. There's a pretty big learning curve however it's not a steep one, if that makes sense. There are no icons whatsoever.
Fighting itself is pretty hard. I'm pretty new to the game and if I manage to get a few shots fired into someone's aircraft without getting shot down myself in a combat situation, I'm more than happy. I'm good at spotting though; spotting is another aspect of this game. You need to be constantly looking around. Constantly.
So where can you get this amazing game? Here's the thing: this ridiculously amazing game costs only €10 on Steam. It does require a somewhat beefy system though. You also need a joystick but you can get a decent entry-level one for like €/$10-20.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/63970/?l=english
You need to download the TF patches to make this game worth buying. Here are the links:
http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6290
http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=100
A couple of gameplay videos you should watch to help convince you how amazing this game is:
RAF: http://www.youtube.com/user/No64Bounder/videos
Luftwaffe: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apeoftheyear/videos
A little history:
+ Show Spoiler +
A little background information about the game. When it was first released in 2011, the game was filled with bugs and performance issues (FPS drops apparently). It was apparently so bad that the game dev behind the game decided to scrap the game entirely and focus on getting their next game out instead.
The amazing part is when a community of flight sim enthusiasts decided to mod the game themselves and develop their own patches to fix the game. It took them some time but they fixed the game quite well. The bugs and performance issues were gone and they also tweaked the flight models and the graphics to finish where the game developers left off. The result was two community-made patches which fixed the game and made it into one of the best flight sims ever made. Ironically, I'm making a thread about this on Team Liquid, the community site responsible for making the game patches is named ... Team Fusion. I'll let that sink in.
The amazing part is when a community of flight sim enthusiasts decided to mod the game themselves and develop their own patches to fix the game. It took them some time but they fixed the game quite well. The bugs and performance issues were gone and they also tweaked the flight models and the graphics to finish where the game developers left off. The result was two community-made patches which fixed the game and made it into one of the best flight sims ever made. Ironically, I'm making a thread about this on Team Liquid, the community site responsible for making the game patches is named ... Team Fusion. I'll let that sink in.
