Giveaway of the Day - Sky Aces: World War II

Sky Aces: World at War II

Introduction:

Sky Aces: World War II is an arcade aviation simulator dedicated to the events of WW II, and the airplanes participating in the conflict over the whole world. This updated version includes improved graphics, better frame rates, new features, improved user interface and HUD plus experimental support for local network games with two players. The distinctive features of the game are models of airplanes of elaborate detail, copied from drawings and historically colored. Using slightly simplified physics, learning the controls of the airplanes is accomplished quickly and easily while providing for a fun gaming experience. NOTE: The game is not a full fledged simulator and cannot make a pilot out of you; instead it lets you experience, from virtual piloting, a maximal adrenaline rush.

Reference accessed http://fly-games.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=30

The Game Basics:

This is a recently released ‘new’ version of Sky Aces (released 25th Dec 09) and not the same one that we were given back in Feb 2008. This time we get to choose from World War II planes rather than WWI.

The preferences menu enables you to tweak the game for either speed or graphics quality by changing the rendering. Lower render quality giving better speeds. If you’ve got an old computer this would be the setting for you; though we’re talking computers made at the turn of the millennium, lol. Most computers should be able to max out the settings and enjoy a thoroughly decent arcade game. There are three modes, training, instant action (quick game) and campaign. You get to choose from several (11) WWII planes, each with it’s own characteristics, though most are locked at the beginning of the game. The game play is relatively easy. Though there are three difficulty settings from Novice, Veteran (Soldier) or Ace of Aces, to make it harder. You can also change the environmental characteristics for example play at night, early in the morning or on a bright sunny day if you play in the instant action mode. The plane is controlled by either the mouse or the keyboard. The latter being more responsive. Unfortunately there’s no joystick or game pad facility, but I’m sure that Xpadder program that’s been mentioned previously will enable those with an aversion for the keyboard to play this game. (Unfortunately it’s no longer freeware). The campaign consists of 33 different missions, which take place on five different maps (this could possibly be ten depending upon which side you choose to play from as thee apperas to be 10 different campaign settings, but only five are available from the allies and five for the Japanese and Germans. When playing in instant action mode you also get to choose one of four different areas, that are Twer, Seliger, Mumansk and Belgorad. There are five nationalities, Russian, English, American, Japanese and German each with their own planes to fly. There are 23 planes in total to choose from, but these are limited to the Nationality you choose to play I found some bugs n this part of the game where choosing a particular nationality wouldn’t necessarily allow you to choose the correct planes) . I do think the maps are rather similar after perusing the game for the past half an hour; but the same enthusiasm is there from when I first started to play the demo. All ground and air targets are destructible. If you crash you even make a dent in the ground or come plumeting to earth if you hit a barrage balloon or other plane, lol. There are seven types of weapon which are selected using the mouse wheel or appropriate key binding. These include the primary and secondry machineguns, large and small bombs plus three types of rocket, fixed, air to air and air to ground missiles. There’s no facility to change the key bindings which is a pity as we all have our own preferences.

Controls:

Movement………………………………………………Mouse axis or arrow keys
Increase or decrease throttle………………A and Z
Fire Gun…………………………………………………Space or LMB
Bombs…………………………………………………..LMB
Rockets………………………………………………….Alt
Menu………………………………………………………Esc
Pause……………………………………………………..P
Camera Angles……………………………………..C, V and B
Toggle Map…………………………………………….F2
Zoom……………………………………………………..Left Shift
Select Weapon………………………………………..Mouse Wheel

FEATURES:

• Easy to learn and fly

• raining missions for learning the game

• 25 airplanes

• Instant action and campaign game styles

• Ability to adjust render quality for slower computers

• Three levels of difficulty

• Soundtrack

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• Windows 98/ME/XP/Vista
• Pentium III processor
• 256 Mb RAM
• 50 Mb hard drive space
• 32 Mb video memory
• Sound card
• DirectX 7

Conclusion:

My advice give it a try, even if you don’t like airplane shooters; this one is different from your F19’s (the first flight sim I ever played that fit onto a single 1.44Mb diskette), Battle of Britain, Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X and Red Baron or more recently released games such as Heroes over Europe, Battlestations Pacific, Blazing angels, Wings of Prey or Rise of Flight in that its an arcade shooter rather than a true flight simulator. There’s no steep learning curve or realistic flight simulation. In Sky Aces you are flying right away, with minimal controls to worry about. All you need to do is stay alive by avoiding the computer generated enemies.

Unfortunately I was a little disappointed with this new release as I was expecting some big improvements over the earlier release (that’s over four years old now), The graphics are an improvement over its predecessor, but the world graphics are still rather unrealistic, I was expecting a much bigger improvement on the graphics side of the game. That said, (as I’m spoilt for choice as I have all of the titles mentioned above) it’s still a very playable arcade shooter that you can literally play straigh out of the box as opposed to a higher learning curve for some of the titles mentioned above (eg Microsoft Flight Simulator X – I’ve still not got the hang of flying most of the planes that come with the base game) and is worth a decent 7 out of 10 IMO

does not work for me. win 7 64 bit. game starts but the image freezes and the game exit with “memory access violation”