Flight

Microsoft Flight Simulator X

Description

Microsoft Flight Simulator X or FSX is the tenth version of Microsoft’s line of civilian flight simulators. It updates the series to take advantage of up-to-date technologies including DirectX 10 and features much improved graphics and multiplayer support in the form of “Shared Skies” feature, which allows multiple players to share the cockpit.

The standard version is aimed at casual players and features 18 planes, 40 high-detail airports, 28 high-detail cities and 30+ structured missions.

The player can choose between flying predefined missions or free flight anywhere he or she wants in single player or multiplayer mode. The whole world is modelled in the game and in this version the maximum altitude is 100 million feet. New aircraft in this version include Airbus A321, DHC-2 Beaver floatplane, Boeing 737-800 and a new ultralight, Air Creation Trike 582 SL. …

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Elite

Description

Elite is a free-form space trading and combat simulation, commonly considered the progenitor of this sub-genre. The player initially controls a character referred to as “Commander Jameson”, starting at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship called Cobra Mark III. Most of the game consists of traveling to various star systems, trading with their inhabitants, gaining money and reputation. Money can also be gained by other means besides trading; these include undertaking military missions, bounty hunting, asteroid mining, and even piracy. As the player character earns money, he becomes able to upgrade his ships with enhancements such as better weapons, shields, increased cargo capacity, an automated docking system, etc.

The game utilizes pseudo-3D wire-frame graphics; its world is viewed from a first-person perspective. It has no overarching story, though a race known as Thargoids play the role of antagonists: their ships will often attack the player-controlled ship, forcing the player to engage in space combat. Combat is action-oriented, taking place in the same environment as the exploration. The player must use various weapons the ship is equipped with, as well as manoeuvre the ship, trying to dodge enemy attacks. The player can also choose to attack neutral ships; doing so will decrease the protagonist’s reputation, eventually attracting the attention of the galactic police. …

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Freelancer

Description

The war between the Coalition and the Alliance depicted in Starlancer had raged on and the Alliance forces were losing. A final plan was organized to punch through the Coalition attackers and send five colony ships across space to the Sirius Sector. 900 years have passed since then and the Sirius sector has been colonized by the surviving ships, dividing the area between four major nations: Liberty, Rheinland, Kusari and Bretonia. The fifth sleeper ship, Hispania, suffered a malfunction in flight, and is thought lost. In the spacelanes between these nations borders and outside of any specific jurisdiction lie undeveloped solar systems, pirate bases, corporate outposts and the neutral Freeports. One of these Freeports has come under attack and been destroyed by an unknown enemy attack. Survivors of the attack, including a freelancer Edison Trent and his business associate, Lonnigan, are evacuated to Planet Manhattan, capital city of the Liberty nation. Once there Edison hears rumors about military buildups and friction between the Sirius nations. It will be up to Trent to seek employment, rebuild his lost assets and discover the meaning behind these rumors.

Freelancer is a third person or first person space simulator and trading game, much like Elite or Wing Commander: Privateer. Players, taking the role of Edison Trent, will need to visit several locations on each planet in order to trade cargo, buy and repair equipment as well as obtain information. In space, Trent controls his spacecraft from either a first person or third person perspective and is able to use primary and secondary weapons. Destroyed enemy spacecraft often leave behind cargo which can be tractor beamed into the cargo hold. …

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Crimson Skies

Description

Crimson Skies is an arcade flight simulator, set in an alternate reality in the year 1937. Based on a FASA pen-and-paper game, the player is cast as a daring rogue who flies missions for fame and fortune. The planes look like a mixture of futuristic planes and planes from WW2.

The single player missions let the player complete jobs such as finding a treasure, hijacking an experimental plane from the enemy or defending their base, a huge zeppelin. …

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Blazing Angels – Squadrons of WWII

Description

Blazing Angels is an air combat arcade game putting the player at the command of a fighter squadron in the Second World War. It’s a pick-up-and-play type of game, with easy-to-grasp controls and an almost non existent learning curve.

The action covers the most important moments of the WWII, from the Battle for England to the bombing raids over Berlin, but also warps a bit the history to make for some entertaining if fictitious moments (i.e. you get to fly over Normandy on D-Day, save the day at Pearl Harbor, etc). The gameplay is quite varied, with about 18 flyable planes during the SP campaign (fighters, recon planes, dive, torpedo and level bombers) and diverse tasks and locations that prevent the game from being overly repetitive, despite a general dogfighting approach. The basic squadron command system and the specific abilities of the wingmen lend a bit of a tactical flavor to the game.

There are a dozen multiplayer game modes available: solo (Dogfight, Seek and Destroy & Aces High), co-op (Dogfight, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Kamikaze and Historical Missions) and squad-based (Dogfight, Capture the Base, Bombing Run and Kamikaze). …

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Blazing Angels 2 – Secret Missions of WWII

Description

In Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII the missions were inspired by real events of WWII and featured real aircraft.

The successor now concentrates on the story of an elite pilot who is part of a secret squad which has access to weapon- and aircraft-prototypes that were never really used during the war and were at best in a prototyping stage. With these machines the squad travels around the world to exotic locations in order to prevent the enemy from building the ultimate weapon.

The gameplay is still the same. You engage in dog fights, bomb targets or fly stunts while you can give rudimentary orders to your squad mates ranging from attack my target to special commands that repair your aircraft.

The multiplayer features the three categories “Deathmatch”, “Co-op” and “Squad-based”. In addition to the modes from the original game, these have been supplemented with the two new game-modes “Capture the Flag” and “Epic Battle”. In “Epic Battle” two teams over control of a map. There are several bases and structures that can be captured or destroyed in order to weaken the enemy and gain the upper hand. …

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SimCopter

Description

SimCopter is a light helicopter flying simulator closely related to Sim City 2000. The player is a rookie helicopter pilot that must make his living by transporting passengers and help the city authority in several tasks, including rescuing sims from fires and boat accidents, divert cars from traffic jams, aid on putting out fires and arresting criminals, controlling riots and MEDEVAC injured sims to nearby hospitals.

The player starts with a basic helicopter, and by completing missions, earn money that can be used to buy larger and faster helicopters and equipment required to deal with more advanced problems (such as a water cannon to put out fires without having to fly directly over the fire and disperse a crowd, tear gas or a megaphone), as well as points to advance to the next level in career mode. The opposite also happens: if a player takes too long to solve a traffic jam, he gets penalized in points. …

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