Welcome to AH2.
If you wanted to sum up this game in a nutshell it'd be easy. That plane coming at you is manned by a breathing, thinking (somewhat) member of the human race and his one thought is to shoot you down. No AI...some guy. He's not gonna repeat the same moves over and over. Well some have...
. He might have some buddies. Those buddies may not wait around to see how he does. They might get in on you, too. And I mean right now! All 10 of them....
I've pretty much tried/played all the flight sims including CFS and IL2. After you've flown this type of flight sim/game CFS is so easy kinda set it back on the shelf...for prosperity purposes.
Graphics may appear somewhat different but I believe it's done that way to allow the most people get up and play using the most diverse computer equipment you can imagine. You'll probably find some guy up who's still flying a P3 1 gig computer. That's what he has to use and he's having alot of fun with it.
The game authors have many years of experience creating this game and have done a great job of keeping it current. They've spent a lot of time modeling the physical differences between the planes to include the gun trajectories, planes speeds, frontal area, stall, buffet dive, climb speeds. Each plane has it's own physical characteristics and you can spend months learning one plane. However, just because you've learned one plane doesn't mean you've made it. You must also fly all the other planes and variants so you can determine comparisons of strengths and weaknesses between them. Then you can begin to use your planes strengths against the other planes weaknesses.
And that's just the planes.
You can spend hours searching and reading articles on the internet concerning dogfighting tactics used over the years by real fighter aces. Guess what? Just about everything you read about the tactics used hold absolutely true in this game. Things like, "speed is life" and "Lose sight, lose the fight", to name a couple, are just as true in this game as they were in real life.
Fights are abundant. No fight is the same (although some guys come at you exactly the same way each time, as I mentioned above).
There aren't many flight sim/games that can offer you so much for so little.
When you get hooked wife ack will become your major concern as you may spend way too much time here.
You mentioned pay for play. The price is right. It's all you can take, 24/7, year in and year out for half the price of a round of golf per month.
The community also becomes a part of your life. Hopefully, not yer whole life...kinda like with yer golf buddies.
Our squad has been around for around 17 years or so and we pretty much stay in touch via email, phones, etc. The game also provides a Annual Convention in which alot of us get together and meet the guys we shoot down/die from.
In other words, this game will give you back just as much as you put into it and then some.
Come on into the Training Arena (TA) We can help you get set up.
Hope this helps.
