Wings Over China

If you play Combat Flight Simulator, you'll want this game. The aircraft paint jobs are beautiful, the Asian scenery looks jungle-riffic, and the new flight models force you to fight the way the Flying Tigers fought, especially at higher difficulty levels. Getting caught in a turning battle with the more maneuverable Japanese fighters is suicide--your P-40 is built for quick climbs, fast dives, and high-firepower kills delivered by the airborne equivalent of a drive-by shotgun blast.

The manual contains historical notes on the air war in China, technical specs for the new planes, and instructions for playing the new missions. These instructions are not complete--don't pay too much attention to them and miss the fact that Wings over China supports a Custom Campaign that allows you to play through the entire history of the Flying Tigers. --Rob Heinsoo

Pros:

• Sharp focus on an engaging subject, simulated with care and precision
• 12 new planes to fly against your friends
• Cool graphics

• Historical focus means that missions lack some variety

Installation was a snap: the cd automatically follows the path on your hard drive to CFS and you are up and running in approx. three minutes. The 20 missions included are well designed and although no 'campaign' is included the missions follow the exploits of the Flying Tigers. Further, these missions are based on historical accounts, not the foolish, unrelated canned missions in CFS. Note that all missions are from the US player perspective.

Since the software loads the additional aircraft into the CFS aircraft data base you can select any of the Abacus aircraft in Quick Combat to dogfight existing CFS aircraft. The only drawback is that you cannot select any of the additional aircraft as opponents - only the original CFS aircraft.

You still have the annoying 'trim' problems associated with CFS but this can be partially solved by using a quality joystick with adjustable tension (e.g., I use the Thrustmaster Afterburner with the tension set to max).

Wingman AI has been completely re-designed and allows for both realistic flight patterns and attacks on enemy aircraft. Radio chatter improves with messages from your wingman that allow you to make informed decisions during dogfights.

For those with new PC's who are concerned about compatability problems with XP: CFS and Wings over China run fine on my Dell 8100 with XP as the OS. I recommend that you have at least 32 Mb of ram (I run with 64) and a quality 3-D card (I'm using a Radeon 7500) to get the full benefit from this title.

Overall, this simulation is excellent and I hope that Abacus considers the European Campaign as a vehicle for additional titles like this one.


Best add on I`ve tried......more then worth the money   November 24, 2001
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

If I hadn`t found Abacus the Japanese would have won the war! Seriously it is an excellent, trouble free addon. I would also suggest some of their other aircraft which you can download(and try for free)at their web site.


A good simulator add-on   June 5, 2001
 23 out of 23 found this review helpful

This is a good add-on to Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator (The European Theater) by Abacus. It adds a dozen airplanes and China scenery, including the F2A Brewster "Buffalo," which was so maligned by Marine Corps pilots at the battle of Midway but was valued by the Finns against the Russians. Anyway, it was interesting to fly the game version. It snap rolls nicely. Last I heard there was a squadron of Buffalos flying on line, I think on Air Warriors.

The scenery and graphics are on a par with Microsoft's best--well, maybe CFS2 is better--but does not equal Jane's WWII Fighters. So far, in my experience, nothing equals the graphics and scenery of Jane's. Flight modeling is as good as most, and better than many. Altogether a good buy at the price. I wish I knew how to transport some of these airplanes from CFS to CFS2, but if there's a way I haven't heard of it.

The simulation runs well on my AMD-K6-2 (350 MHz) with 64 Mb of RAM. I'm running Windows ME for an Operating System, and have a Flightstick Pro with rudder pedals. Nothing fancy. No problem loading or running it.

Joseph Pierre, USN (Ret)

It's good   June 11, 2000
 12 out of 23 found this review helpful

It's like Combat flight Simulator, only it's better. It's got new planes and better enemy pilots.