Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Montezuma on June 13, 2003, 04:46:43 PM
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Saw this review on the PC Gamer site. Amazing that AH was even mentioned, since the 'mainstream' games press has managed to totally ignore it for years.
WARBIRDS III - PC GAMER MAGAZINE
These days, when hardcore propeller-heads argue the merits of the best online World War II aerial combat game, you’re unlikely to hear mention of anything other than Aces High and WarBirds. At any given moment, scores of dedicated stick-and-rudder fans can be found violently abusing their fellow pilots in the virtual skies that HighTech and iEntertainment rent out on a 24-hour basis.
When WarBirds III rolled out of the hangar earlier this year with its spiffy new T&L-enhanced graphics engine and dozens of upgraded aircraft and ground-combat vehicles, iEntertainment jumped straight to the top of the online flight-simming pyramid in the eyes of most online veterans.
The massively multiplayer flight-sim business is a shaky one, though. A shortage of subscribers knocked Air Warrior completely off the radar last year, and, with a hefty $24.95/month charge for full access to all of WB III’s arenas ($9.95 buys you basic access), the WarBirds community has also begun to thin out significantly over the past year.
In an effort to reverse this trend, iEntertainment has joined with Simon & Schuster to produce WarBirds III: Fighter Pilot Academy, a new retail version of the sim that boasts a standalone offline gaming component calculated to entice new recruits into the fold.
So what do you get for $30? Well, in addition to all the stuff you can get gratis via a 155MB download — including 52 flyable WWII fighters and bombers, and several attractively rendered real-world terrain maps — you get 12 short training missions and 13 Instant Action and scripted Battle scenarios that can all be completed offline in a single afternoon. The addition of an AI component is certainly welcome, but without any cool maps, printed manuals, or even a multi-mission campaign to sweeten the deal, this product really doesn’t have a hope in hell of competing with premium boxed titles like IL-2 Sturmovik or Combat Flight Simulator 3 for standalone gameplay value.
Nor does it want to. With two free months of access to the basic online game (or one month of premium access) bundled into the purchase, the real purpose behind this release is to expose as many customers as possible to the rich WarBirds multiplayer environment and encourage them to sign up for a full online hitch. So what if the offline training missions take less than an hour to complete? The online game, which runs hiccup-free on both broadband and dial-up connections, will teach you more about dogfighting and combat-maneuvering tactics in one week than most sims will in a year.
The WarBirds community is populated by a number of skilled veterans who are only too willing to help newbies earn their combat wings. This process often involves ventilating your aircraft with 30mm cannon fire, but it’s a “tough love” kinda thing.
When set to full realism mode, WarBirds III’s ultra-challenging aircraft physics can be quite daunting for rookie pilots, but the payoff comes when you get your first air-to-air kill against an honest-to-god human opponent. Although almost all of the action in WarBirds is weighted heavily toward the advanced, premium-priced arenas, the relaxed-realism theaters (currently all but deserted) will likely get a much-needed influx of new players thanks to this new release.
WarBirds provides one of the most entertaining and challenging air-combat environments on the Net. Though this release doesn’t really deliver the expected offline goods, it does give novice sim fans a convenient and inexpensive opportunity to learn what all the hubbub is about. And that’s mostly a good thing.
— Andy Mahood
FINAL VERDICT
HIGHS: Dedicated online community; many flyable planes; authentic flight modeling; hiccup-free Net play.
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LOWS: High monthly fee; dinky offline component; no printed manual; empty relaxed-realism arenas.
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BOTTOM LINE: The Top Gun of online aerial-combat sims — but a so-so offline experience.
SCORE: 75%
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These days, when hardcore propeller-heads argue the merits of the best online World War II aerial combat game, you’re unlikely to hear mention of anything other than Aces High and WarBirds.
What?
What about WWIIOL????
:cool:
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I cant help but think if wb3 were indeed "TopGun" of online ww2 mmol air combat then thats where everyone would be. I dont think this is the case.
This reviewer gettin a quid pro quo or something?
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Of the three, WWIIOL takes the points home for me..
I just cannot resist the more complete feel of a battlefield, than plain flying... I've been flying too much pure A2A sims :)
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I'm gonna sign up tonight! WB3 sounds awesome!
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I'll see you in there Loser! I'm sold! Anything billed as the "Top Gun" has got to be awesome!
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Seems the lows outweigh the highs and yet WB is still the "top gun online aerial-combat sims". This guy definitely hasn't tried AH or someone slipped a fin in his back pocket.
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Originally posted by RightF00T
Seems the lows outweigh the highs and yet WB is still the "top gun online aerial-combat sims". This guy definitely hasn't tried AH or someone slipped a fin in his back pocket.
I doubt he has tried AH as he would realize how much more popular it is (eg. 500+ vs 50+). On the other hand many non-simmers (and quite a few simmers for that matter) are put off by the more dated look of AH (not that this a criticism but just stating the fact that AH graphics are 4 years off the pace now).
Your average game reviewer is usaully not much of a sim freak so they look at the graphics rather than flight-model or realism. They also only look at a game for a few days which is enough to learn the ropes of most FPS and RTS games but the learning curve of MMP flight sim is months or possibly years.
It will be extremely interesting to see what happens whn AHII comes out. IMHO the only thing WBIII has going for it is the events and that at twice the price of AH.
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Originally posted by Pei
On the other hand many non-simmers (and quite a few simmers for that matter) are put off by the more dated look of AH (not that this a criticism but just stating the fact that AH graphics are 4 years off the pace now).
I have been playing WB offline for a long time, waiting for the day I would afford to play it online. I was really excited when WB3 appeared, but it wouldn't run on my system because of my crappy video card. That's what led me to discover AH and now my money goes to HTC :) Dated look ,which means lower system requirements, is what brought me in here.
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That was certainly an unbiased review, wasn't it?
Ya know..... back in the day...... when ya reviewed ONE game, you pretty much just reviewed that game.
If you were gonna COMPARE sims... you usually got the space to write equally about all of them in the comparison.
Things change, I guess. Obviously.
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You noticed that also Toad?
I thought it was funny that AH was mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs but never mentions again. I thought it was just me.
Oh well.
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Good point Toad...
lol
Declare a winner without ever seeing the competition.
lol
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I read awhile ago that that guy is a racing sim guy. So, take that with a grain of salt. Pretty much the reason I quit reading PCGamer a long time ago (well, that and it sucks as a magazine, only the previews are decent, and most of that crap you can get off the web).
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I think Wild Bill must have been on his knees under that guys desk while he was writing that thing.
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You know, with the current events concerning WB and such (just how bad everything really is, I don't know, nor do I really care a whole lot), the timing does have a bit of that old fishy smell.
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i found this quote hilarious...
"will teach you more about dogfighting and combat-maneuvering tactics in one week than most sims will in a year."
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I'm guessing WB's places ads in PC Gamer whereas AH does not.
Whoever spends the most money on ads gets the best reviews.
Found this out with Car Audio Magazine. We've been making high quality car audio amplifiers for years and never got mentioned in a single thing till we placed a few ads in the magazine. Suddenly, our amplifiers were touted as the best things since sliced bread.
When we stopped placing ads in the magazine, we drifted into obscurity once again.
Just the way it goes.
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Wow, Grimco-this was a relevation?
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That may be true for some magazines, but not all. At least, it's not the case with the computer magazine I worked for the past 3 years. In the labs at least, we were too concerned with how close lunchtime is to really care about favoritism. :)
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Originally posted by Gadfly
Wow, Grimco-this was a relevation?
Yeah, I was shocked...LOL
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Originally posted by GrimCO
Whoever spends the most money on ads gets the best reviews.
...
Just the way it goes.
That's why I quit using "Car and Driver", "Road and Track", and "MotorTrend Magazine" as new-car shopping resources. With the exception of the photos, I couldn't trust anything that was printed.
"Consumer Reports" rules!
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WHat the hell plane has a 30mm?
They got an A-10 over there?:eek:
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109G6 and up in the 109 series can carry 30mms in the nose in place of a 20mm.
190A8s can carry 30mm gondolas under their wings.
-SW
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Then there's the P-39 with the 37mm in the nose and those belgian-waffle planes that have the 37mm too.
2 40mm in one of the Hurricanes over here.
MiniD
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109's baby !
the infamous Tater gun
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I need to start expanding my horizons and start flying something besides my F6F.
Nah, took me 2 years to figure the damn thing out.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
WHat the hell plane has a 30mm?
They got an A-10 over there?:eek:
off the top of my head (im @ work):
109g6
109g10
190a8
110g2
ta152
me262
me163
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This one line destroyed the guys credibility for me:
A shortage of subscribers knocked Air Warrior completely off the radar last year
Airwarrior had a reduce player base but truthfully they still had a very strong one; at least as strong if not stronger and with more people playing it than what you all say WB has right now. If he had done his homework he would have known that EA pulled the plug not because people weren't paying for it and playing it but for other internal reasons.
Sounds like the guy just got tasked to write an article and did very little research and just took some stuff he quickly found and made some glib assumptions.
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Mahoooood has mentioned Warbirds several times in the past. I believe it's about the limit of his experience with the genre. PC Lamer sucks anyway, CGW doesn't kiss as much advertiser/potential advertiser bellybutton with their reviews.
Charon
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Game mags are crap, all of 'em... their laminated pages don't make for good TP either.
-SW
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They're just Maxim wanna-bes nowadays without the T&A.
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Originally posted by ghostdancer
This one line destroyed the guys credibility for me:
Airwarrior had a reduce player base but truthfully they still had a very strong one; at least as strong if not stronger and with more people playing it than what you all say WB has right now.
Maybe a reduced player base when you compare AW on EA with the AW that was on AOL but that was when AW was for free on AOL. When EA pulled the plug on AW, it was EA's second most popular multi-player game with close to 38,000 paying customers, which made it EA's second most popular online game and at the time it got yanked, EA's #1 game UO (Ultima Online) only had slightly over 50,000 paying customers. Another irony is that the 3rd most popular game on EA.com was a game that was in closed beta and didn't have any type of promotion during it's brief run but yet it got yanked along with AW for a game that barely attracted 10,000 paying customers on its release and within a few months dwindled to the hundreds. I wonder where Majestic is now?
I'm curious to see what the numbers of paying customers for WB was during this period, was it even close to AW's numbers?
Ack-Ack