What is Rise of Flight?
Introduction
Rise of Flight is a Combat Flight Simulator for PC, set in WWI over the trenches and towns of France. The Iron Cross edition gives access to several new planes to fly and extra features in the game. The community is amazingly helpful, and the developers seem to really care about the future not only of their great sim, but also of the genre in general. The first great air war is where it's at. Not great as in fantastic of course, but great as in it was the first clash of opposing air forces in history.
The game however certainly is fantastic!
Few issues to get out of the way first though. If you have a dual core processor and Windows 7, might be best to either forget it, or think about dual booting with Windows XP, because this game just does not like Win 7 and certain hardware in certain circumstances. This means juddering stuttering game play that renders it almost unplayable.
I use XP for this game, and it's a totally different experience. The other thing worth mentioning is that you kind of need a bit of a ninja rig to play it. It will use as much memory as you can throw at it, but the reward is well worth the investment.
Hot off the press!! There is a way of running in Win 7, by using a small external program to limit the game to one processor (setting affinity 1 or 2). It's easy to do and here is a link to the forum that talks about it.
http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=300&t=16756
Remember, if you need a sweet HOTAS Joystick setup to fly with, check out my review HERE
To check out the BEST Combat Flight Simulators for PC click HERE
What's it like to play?
Be prepared to invest some time in getting this baby off the ground. Of course, it is fully customisable with even an arcade setting, which is good for training, but to get the most out of it, you need to put some effort in.
As you would expect, the flight simulation aspect is extremely detailed. They have investigated the physical attributes of all the planes, and simulated them beautifully. In other words, the planes handle as they would in real life, and let me assure you, they will bite you on the ass if you let your guard down, especially on landing!
There are gauges that you can turn on and off to make things a little easier, and there is even a waypoint pointer and auto pilot if you really need to, however I am assured that these items were not factory standard options back in the early 1900s.
Combat is all about getting the drop on your opponent, height = potential speed = probably not going to die quite so quickly (well there was a reason they were referred to as the 20 minuters!) Armed with only 1 or machine guns that frequently jam means that unless you get lucky and hit the pilot or the gas tank, your going to need to pump more than a few rounds into the canvas to bring the guy down, but when you do, the physics engine gets to show off its awesomeness!
Verdict
In my experience, you are either a sim fan or not. If the pictures here whet your appetite, then you either have the game or are rushing to the Amazon links at the bottom of the page ;)
In my humble opinion, this sim is fantastic, graphically amazing, handles well, combat is engaging and fun, historically sympathetic and accurate. I love it and do not regret for one minute buying it. And that's without mentioning the multi-player. That's right, you can go on-line with this bad boy and dogfight against real human opponents. Mass dogfights are a regular occurrence with teams battling it out. The game also logs ans stores your flight statistics on their servers, so you can track wins/losses and other stats.
There is also the campaign mode, and single missions plus a career mode just added. Also, the developer is supporting the game with an ongoing series of updates, and purchasable add on planes. It really doesn't get any better than this!
Oh, and those thinking I will just head over to my favourite torrent site and do a sneaky download, don't bother! The last time I checked, there were no available torrents and no planes to crack the game that I could find. Flight sims are such a niche market that they deserve your support or the genre will simply vanish, because the companies making these games are often small and simply cannot afford to lose sales to the pirates.
Please check out the vids below, they give a nice taster of what's on offer, and my advice is to go for the Iron Cross Edition as you get lots of extra planes to hoon around in ! 9/10 from this avid fan!
UPDATE!!
Rise of Flight is going Free 2 Play!!!!
You will only get access to 2 planes and limited other features, but it's a great way to dip your feet in, also bear in mind that we have just received a MASSIVE! patch adding loads of cool new content, like a career mode, campaigns and autumnal weather!
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