On a fun level – playing War Thunder

While I ain't had that much time recently heres how I describe War Thunder.

Pretty unknown? No, not any more thanks to WT. 

This is a He 112 in the B-1 variant, YAY

The first thing I had to do is buy me 500 Golden Eagles, a good invest in a bird called He 112 B-1. I really needed to have that plane because it was my main airplane while playing Hereos in the Sky (a more or less unkown MMORPG). AFAIK that other game offered the He 112 B-2 type but who cares (seems I do). This He 112 has a charming look and it's the perfect workhorse for leveling up, e.g. climbing the WT tech tree and spending 3 Euros wasn't that hard with the result of a plane with fast turn speed IMO. Too sad that it's only a Tier 1 plane. It is one of my absolute favorites.

While in World of Warplanes in the beginning you can start with Ar 65 and where WT begins with He 51 as the starter plane, in WOWplanes you can choose between Fw 56, Ar 68 and the He 51. Both games WOWarplanes and WT offer a different variaty of planes, you ain't gonna miss a single plane but this only counts when playing both games at a time. Both have great GFX and accurate modeled aircraft. However the real IL-2 player will miss the realness-factor since WOWarplanes and WT are no simulators. Here is where WT gets a plus point since it offers cockpits and major airplane controls like gears, flaps, elevator trim and what so ever. However, theres a possibility to setup lots things and it seems that since WT is from one of the former IL-2 series developer studios that indicates a masterplan of IL-2-ilizing the whole world on a it's multi plattform game. The all over summary would lead to a casual experience but who knew that this would feel like a dream becoming virtual reality. This ain't no simulation = who cares, it might end up beeing one, no doubt! This time things like camera positions and stuff are really made for the moment and lead to a epic ingame experience. What I really call epic is the OculusRift like feeling when playing WT with a gamepad and pressing the target focus button. Yeah, it's quite easy to handle WT, that's why it's the smarter IL-2 but never tell that to a IL-2 fan, please. Let's just not forget that WOWplanes offers other interesting aspects and that I would play it from time to time again if my PC would not suffer from it. Let's say it has great GFX and my PC not ;) My favorite waste of time will be WT because I really like how they push the game to certain directions, digging their Dev blog and reading patch notes are the first proofs of addiction.

What fascinated me most at WT was the following:
- awesome atmosphere, breathtaking action with lots of control
- the combination of air, ground and sea (sea will be adeed I guess, e.g. the WT logo)
- a contemplative implementation of at least a first bunch of dream planes
- steady development, new planes, tanks and maps all the time
- stunning level of model details (the movie GFX option is great for screenshots)
- your own skins and you can even upload meshes (awesome)
- even my badly half-broken cooler handles the FPS with even good looking results

I would say this has future. I expect modern times jet aircraft to come sooner or later but first more of those historic airplanes, please ;) My first impression of WT is really really good. You will miss all the expert skill and hardware leveling stuff. It's very comfortable to play with not much to do (R & D parts of game are boring but anyway usefull). Usually I would say no way I want to select different engines, hull platings and stuff. But I guess I'm not the only 'virtual collector', means the gameplay is built around the research tech tree and this is a great thing since I can have best equipped stuff without all the struggle that it ment when I was playing other tech tree and equip games. It's a race for the highest tech tree plane and the Tier system is very easy to understand (unlike other games). The dev blog shows that there a five more german planes in development. And those are impressive like the Fw 200 or the He 219 'Uhu'. I wonder if they ever can have the amount of a game called Heroes in the Sky or the legendary IL-2 '46 game. A US military historian once said a funny thing about aircraft developings of WWII, especially in terms of germans: 'Instead of building one plane and making it better and better the germans built dozens of planes'. So the biggest question will be (while even Wikipedia ain't got a full list of aircraft yet, neither I). Will there ever be a entire summary of all aircraft of that time? ...I'm not sure ;)

My two cents, actually three. No, I forgot one, uhm
- theres a big difference when playing with mouse-aiming or with a gamepad. Players tend to call gamepad users n00bs but actually they have a way trickier gameplay to handle. Theres also a difference when playing on a console and on a PC and that difference is clearly visible and within gameplay when comparing PC and console version. This is a call for more respect on us gamepad users, you keyboard-mousers, you ;)
- This game could have more features but they might be added some how, some way, who knows.
- uhm? << to be solved

I will definitively create skins for War Thunder, stay tuned. I have to finish a He 162 for IL-2 first. Today I finished the first He 112 test skin, this means I will offer it here for download when the word 'test' can be replaced. :D

And let me finish this post with this kinda saying comment: 'There are too many airplanes that you wanna fly around with but only a few games to jump inside'. Those would be IL-2, Wowplanes, War Thunder and HitS. At least four things less to worry about. It's depends on you to seek for your favorite planes, WOWplanes has lot's of fancy ones, too and remember, WOWplanes has some WT doesn't has and so on. But it could be that WT will get to be the only game needed in future. Now that will never happen since IL-2 stands alone on it's throne and similar to that WT will take it's time to reach almost perfect state and while good things take time I will continue the game switching even WT will be the first instance from now on.

Wing Commander Saga – The LOLCATS strike back! Most epic game ever!

A true Hall of Fame entry:
The LOLCATS strike back! The Most epic game ever: Wing Commander Saga!



Cat's are fun: A Cat on the ISS would be the most ever clicked YouTube video I guess.
I don't know how, but cat's somehow appeared in space, they call themselves Kilrathi now.
And they evolved to be lovely monsters. Yep and we and them became equal so watch it, they fly spaceships. BTW: The cute angry cat on the left actually ain't a Kilrah (those look more like tigers).


Oh yeah, so linear story based gameplay can be big fun, entertaining and thrilling. It's about atmosphere and you can feel it even theres no atmosphere in the vast of space. The storyline is like this: A Squadron, Carriers that house you, lot's of cat's everywhere. They call us furless freaks (maybe because we freaked out on funny cat-vids, yeah no doubt). They have CapShips / BigShips and lot's or medium and catsize support crafts. They fight hard but they don't risk too much. They entirely blame your flight skills (at least till right before you finished all campaign missions) + they hit hard.

The seven lifes thing works for cat's even in space, be it as if you need to restart a certain mission or because they can eject their ship just like you could. You pathetic descendant of monkeys! ...that's one of the more gentle things they said to me. Since they really make you want to find arguments (because of their flight skills or what they say) you can enjoy listening to what your taff wing mates have to counter. Fly in groups of 8 or more or do a recon mission with only one wingman. Play all those "I always wanted to" things. De-stabilize the Kilrathi presence at different sectors of space, get them away from any resources, aim for their Carriers and whatever (try damage it part by part, if they let you).

Having a great time:
Do two atmospheric flights, safe people, safe your Carriers. Encounter a loyal Monarchy of cat's following their Kings / independant leaders and say miaow to many high society cat's. A couple of the interesting stories and sceneries know from the various Wing Commander releases await you behind the ingame part where you have to stand them while you and they play hide and seek. This is no old-to-new: It has been made from A-Z for it's pilots. This also means the storyline introduces you the the world of Wing Commander. It's a tribute to Chris Robert's Wing Commander (which many of you might played before as it was the first top seller PC games, had movies and merchandising decades ago). WC Saga is made by fans for fans. Unlike Battlestar Galactica Diaspora – which also is a very epic game based on the FreeSpace2 Engine – Wing Commander Saga feels a bit more comfortable. I recommend flying only with "Glide Mode ON" (adds fun and simulator charecteristics). Meet famous cat's (you will get to know them). Have a little dogfight, the cat's have awesome ships (absolutely). Now they don't just look frightening sweet – unfortunately they are your target's (oh behave, cute cat's) . You will experience stunning briefing sequences, great music, voice-speech and radio-comms. the AI's will become your friends. Even the graphics are not state of the art the visuals have been all over raised to the maximum possible that the FS2 engine can master! If you haven't played it yet, trust me, everybody is saying this is trully thrilling and totally entertaining.

One or two pictures:

Download it here for free – have some fun:
http://wcsaga.com

Notes:
– Play it or never even think of calling it wack (it's Open Source, it was meant for something)
– This ain't a Multiplayer but they're working on such a thing at the moment
– I can't wait till we can pilot the cat's ships ourselves. They're on it, too!


This entry has been written by Simulator Miaow, meet her, she is here on this blog (on the right side), she wants to play a bit and she is a cute non-monster cat. 

Aquanox 2 – A forgotten piece of art

This is worth another entry in the Hall of Fame of great Simulator like games even it was more a Sub-Opera: Aquanox 2 Revelation and The Angel's Tears. A epic liniar story line driven gameplay, personal submarines, Steampunk, the deep sea scenario of a nuked future and hunting forgotten treasures. What else does a Nerd want to play? 

It was a Deepsea Simulator, no doubt! Casual mode could be turned off delivering adjustable and incredibly tricky handling. But lifes a #§%! and the game studio behind it imploded because of lack of interesting and because most people were playing mainstream stuff. It might also be because the selling chain wasn't organized well so non-european people didn't even heard of it.

Neopolis, I can't forget that city near Europe deep down below miles of water. It's like Georgia on my mind. And then there was the latin america deep sea, I met Angelina there, we survived and felt in love but unfornutaly, those others, it's without any words. That asian girl was funny, and that afro dude called Stoney, he is the best. I owned the Drake Industries Carpenter XXL Sub and drove the Salty Dog, what a ugly piece of sub (comparable to today's submarines). Later I managed to dive with an organic stealth batman's sub like ship, uuuhh wow. In the end I found something which created a longterm vision of a "Whatever Hall" without spoiling too much. I'm gonna feature the "Whatever Hall" in some future post related to something I call the "Backup". Meeting lots of Cyberpunk characters I had fun talking to them because beside the mission part there was time to "2D walk across your ship" and since the characters moved from here to there, you had to find 'em. Besides that you could do the basic things, upgrading your subs with some offensive and defensive hardpoints. Besides blowing stuff up with several types of weapons you could raise your cargo space, add turrent command software, power generators, armor plating, Buzzer flares, noise reduction, speed boosters, a fixer and so on. The level design was for it's time beyond imagination with lots of vegetation, deep sea vulcanos, thrilling ambients, ancient cities and epic places to park at. The game engine was made by massive development. The all over look and feel including the design was epic and well done like a movie. This game is still in stores but I don't know if the credits ever reach it's creators.

What is the message of this post?

Please let me make something clear. Nowadays theres no Submarine Sim with state of the art GFX and Engine available, none at all my friends! Besides Silent Hunter and only a few other examples Aquanox 2 or it's prequel "Schleichfahrt" were the ones taking care of unterwater fun. And remember, Silent Hunter is also a sunken project and no doubt, other games on topic didn't even appear well so Submarine games were and still are a niche.

SimTech2K must have played on all grounds:
After beeing a Sci-fi fan looking up at spaceships, playing dozens of space related games I once realized... "hey, deepsea is like space, too, I wanna hopp into a sub". But just like they say in spanish: ¿y duespues? "and then?". What happens now!? I ask this for real now that Star Citizen is leading the race into the new space age! Some time ago while researching the topic deepsea Sims I found an ambitious CryEngine3 project on the CryDev Forums. However I couldn't manage to re-find this project. Why is that? Was it bad re-research skills or did this project also sunk already? I also heard of a community project trying to recreate Aquanox but with slow like no progress. I really want to play a Submarine game with the look of Steampunk but as you might know, I'll get serious on shapes and engineering details + I want good visuals and a powerfull game engine. Now give me that dude, I'll appreciate, all my support!

Count me in for a Kickstarter or Indigogo crowdfunding action – feel free to contact me on this topic, I might have lots of things to add!

Be a star citizen!

The first triple A game with 4K (CryEngine3) resolution beeing totaly crowdfunded + currently breaking all records + is getting beyond all expectations featuring top designers, real scale objects, true flight physics, toilets and even beans, yes beans!!

The vid below presents the Hornet but it's just one of dozens spaceships that will be available:

I would like to fly the Retaliator but they should give it a name change since I would be more a trader like player:

For more info on Star Citizen visit:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com

Never heard of Chris Roberts? Ever played Elite, one of the first epic games for PC? Or this ...check out Wing Commander Saga and discover the reason for this guys success story. It's a free game, a tribute based on the FreeSpace2 Engine, totaly epic:
www.wcsaga.com