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Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater
by Jim "Twitch" Tittle
Smoking F4F
Combat
No matter what, you will never out turn the Japanese. True energy fighter tactics must be used for success. But, for me, even the Zero didn't turn and maneuver crisply enough. It will be awhile against veterans and aces till you are surviving. No, the enemy A.I. does not cheat. The Zero will out turn the F6F but the good A.I. will make you use other vertical tactics besides turn to win a dogfight. No more "turn till you get him." The American A.I. will not get suckered into that either.
Actually, I felt and uneasiness about the flight models and missions. The missions were varied from escort, fighter sweep to ground attack, of course, but some seemed very easy while others were really hard regardless of difficulty setting. Just like real? Some planes' characteristics were comfortable while others were lacking in crispness. Seemed as though every plane was barely making 200 knots homeward bound with just tiny damage to any part of it at 100% throttle!
Personally, I like the EAW flight models better. You may find CFS2's more to your liking, however. I just never totally warmed up to the CFS ones no matter how I adjusted the myriad settings for my joystick.
All that aside, the combat was fine. You won't encounter any huge, 100-plus number of aircraft in the sky at once, but that was never the historical truth in the Pacific anyway. You should have enough to keep you busy. I met varied A.I. on all types of missions even setting the career on "hard." Realistic. Wingmen are vastly improved. You really get independent A.I. thinking in this area. If you are occupied, they will do their best to achieve the mission goals and be as available as possible to assist you. You wingmen are still talented but don't seem quite as quick to come to you rescue as pre-Beta. They respond with "problems" or "hands full" now. That's okay since I don't really find that much assistance lacking. What I like is that they will attack and defend without a continuous series of finger-tiring key commands. They are very independent---more human-like.
Certainly, with experience you can anticipate the A.I.'s moves. There are a finite number of things they will, or can, do. Hey, even German aces with hundreds of missions got to know what to expect from the enemy. It's natural. But it will take a while. The "while" depends on your skills.
Doomed P-39
I think gunnery is well modeled here. I found no problems, once I was into it, to calculate lead and range without the range assistance numbers on-screen. Enemies appear the proper size, relative to range, adding to the authenticity. Ballistic drop was just right. You can also shoot-up an enemy's aircraft and know he's done and move to the next target. When he goes in you'll get confirmation (but not necessarily immediately). In all, this aspect of the virtual killing process is very well done.
The Magnificant Seven
There are but seven planes to fly. Albeit good ones, more will need to be added to keep CFS2 alive. It should be easy to make the P-39 or Oscar flyable and there IS an "addon" folder in the file structure. The architecture is open and simple enough to import things. The now empty "addon" file means Microsoft is anticipating this. All of the original CFS .BMP files from Europe are in there awaiting activation. The P-47, P-51, Mosquito, Hurricane, DO 17, Fw-190 and all are there. There are British and German career icons that do nothing right now. It is very easy to modify the weapons and build the four 20mm Corsair in minutes. All the files are written in plain English that pertain to weapons and flight models. With the enclosed .BMP skin files it will be easy to "build" planes and paint existing ones.
But seven is seven only out of the box. I would not look for Microsoft to build add-on planes faster than "modders" can. But what about adding them in? The campaign and missions are as similarly written as the plane files. Making new missions and campaigns should be "do-able."
Is this the ultimate combat flight simulation? No, because that is widely subjective to the player/pilot. Everyone will not be happy, ever. Is CFS2 worth the purchase "as is?" Yes, it's very good, but not great. But neither was EAW till modders began messing with it. At least Microsoft is making that easy.
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