Well, I've been involved in these games since 1987 - as player, events creator, consultant, and scourge. Started in Air Warrior. On a Mac SE. At 300 baud. Using a mouse. So I've pretty much seen it all. I guess I've known HiTech since the early 90's. So you can take my comments for whatever you feel they're worth.
Anyway ... I have to say I'm impressed as hell with Aces High. Not just because they built such a great product, but that they did it so damn fast. Here's what impressed me:
- Gorgeous visuals. One of the few flight sims I've seen to really use the 3D hardware the right way. Haze, e-maps, all that is done right. The "world" we fly in looks as we expect. Terrain has undulations even. Love it. 3D cockpit textures need some work, but who cares.
- Predictable gunnery and flight models. One of the most important things in any interface is predictability. If I do this, it does that. WarBirds still leaves enough doubt as to what to expect for every control input to be a pain. The AH gunnery seems to have fewer of those "how'd he fly through that wall of tracers" instances. And the planes don't bounce around so annoyingly (auto-combat trim - love it).
- Best tracers in the business. Not just the look, but the behavior as well.
- Clouds that work. This is new to 1.06, and there's still glitches, but clouds are as important as the sun in air combat. The ramifications of being able to program storm fronts for scenario play are yet to be explored (imagine having to time a bomber strike for a hole in the cloud layer over the target).
- Great view system. Locking preferred head positions for each view is great. The zoom key too - much less eye strain.
- A fun and pretty balanced plane set. I've heard some grumblings about AH only having the uber-rides, but who cares? Just about all the late war planes seem to at least be competetive. Odds are a La-7 will beat a Me109F ... but the 109F at least has a chance here.
- Return of the 3-country format. The best thing about 3-countries is that it's self-policing. "He who lives by the horde, dies by the horde." The WB WW2 arena could work as a 2-country arena if the plane set weren't so hopelessly unbalanced for it. Maybe a similar set up would work here - who knows?
- Solid in-close performance. I see some warpage at D15-30, but once you're in firing position things are solid. I still get more disco's than I should on a DSL line, but I'm sure that'll go away in time.
- The game is fun. I haven't had serious fun in a flight sim for years. And that means a lot - the balance between simulation and entertainment is hard to pull off.
- Good technology. Auto-installer for maps and updates. Check.
Anyway ... well done HT and Pyro.
About the only negative comment I have to make (other than the disco's) is that having a loose conduct policy has its drawbacks. At least once a night I have to hear someone making racial slurs on channel 1. There is a difference between being vulgar and being an a-hole. This isn't a ding on the game, and hopefully this will be self-policed as well because it isn't called for.
-DoK
