March 10th, 2019
In Focus Review - The state of Flight-Sims and HOTAS Games in 2019
You know it has been a number of years since I touched a flight-sim on the PC. Only recently did I dive back in (no pun intended lol). My background involved covering PC military aviation and combat simulations for various online and print-based magazines, and even for a few years via RealVideo/RealAudio long before YouTubers/Streamers for the All Games Network. What a time it was too!
From the mid 90s into the early 2000s...it was truly the golden-age of military aviation simulations on the PC. Microprose, Interactive Magic, DID, Digital Integration, Microsoft, Novalogic, Spectrum Holobyte, Sierra/Dynamix,Eagle Dynamics/The Fighter Collection... all were once household names with flight-sim enthusiasts.
Microsoft still exists today, but it's last Flight Simulator product was around 2006. Around the early 2000s just how grunge seemingly killed heavy-metal music...console gaming contributed largely to sealing the fate of PC gaming. PC flight-simulations were much bigger budget projects over say a Real-Time-Strategy game, or a FPS (First-Person-Shooter). Most flight-sims required intense calculations to “simulate” an aircraft, ballistics, the geography around you, proper AI to fight with, and against you. When games like Call of Duty and Command and Conquer sold a zillion more units than the last big budget flight-sim... it's hard not to realize where the money was headed at the time.
I also strongly believe as easily as Operation Desert Storm's CNN footage of smart-bombs dropping in Iraq helped fuel every young mans urge to fly a jet-fighter, and created a thirst to bomb the middle east deeper into its stone-age on the PC...the events of 911 shed a grim light on flight-simulators due to how the perpetrators reportedly used Microsoft Flight-Simulator on the PC to train themselves on how to thrust airliners into the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon.
I also recently upgraded my aging Saitek X-52 Pro HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) gear with a new Thrusmaster HOTAS gear boxed set T.1600M FCS HOTAS, which includes the T.16000 stick, and TWCS Throttle (pictured above). I set out to find a bunch of new sims and games that can really make use of my new gear. Here's what I've found....
From the mid 90s into the early 2000s...it was truly the golden-age of military aviation simulations on the PC. Microprose, Interactive Magic, DID, Digital Integration, Microsoft, Novalogic, Spectrum Holobyte, Sierra/Dynamix,Eagle Dynamics/The Fighter Collection... all were once household names with flight-sim enthusiasts.
Microsoft still exists today, but it's last Flight Simulator product was around 2006. Around the early 2000s just how grunge seemingly killed heavy-metal music...console gaming contributed largely to sealing the fate of PC gaming. PC flight-simulations were much bigger budget projects over say a Real-Time-Strategy game, or a FPS (First-Person-Shooter). Most flight-sims required intense calculations to “simulate” an aircraft, ballistics, the geography around you, proper AI to fight with, and against you. When games like Call of Duty and Command and Conquer sold a zillion more units than the last big budget flight-sim... it's hard not to realize where the money was headed at the time.
I also strongly believe as easily as Operation Desert Storm's CNN footage of smart-bombs dropping in Iraq helped fuel every young mans urge to fly a jet-fighter, and created a thirst to bomb the middle east deeper into its stone-age on the PC...the events of 911 shed a grim light on flight-simulators due to how the perpetrators reportedly used Microsoft Flight-Simulator on the PC to train themselves on how to thrust airliners into the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon.
I also recently upgraded my aging Saitek X-52 Pro HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) gear with a new Thrusmaster HOTAS gear boxed set T.1600M FCS HOTAS, which includes the T.16000 stick, and TWCS Throttle (pictured above). I set out to find a bunch of new sims and games that can really make use of my new gear. Here's what I've found....
DCS World
So it's now 2019, and I'm sad to say there's still not a lot going on for flight-sim enthusiasts, but out of the ashes it seems one company has been busy catering to the hard-core crowd, and they're the only one to have stayed the course. The Fighter Collection and Eagle Dynamics are essentially what once was the guys who brought us SU-27 Flanker, and later LOMAC (Lock On: Modern Air Combat), Black Shark, and now Digital Combat Simulator World, or DCS World for short.
DCS World is a free-2-play (F2P) sandbox world. With it you get a TF-51-Mustang and the Su-25T to fly for free. You can create your own missions and campaigns, and a mission generator gives you a lot to do. The graphics are truly some of the best I've ever seen in a PC flight-sim. While they do claim it offers “casual play” as well, this is a hard-core flight simulation, just like their previous stand alone Black Shark and A-10 products were years ago, and then some. I can't say there's much "casual" about it.
It's no surprise that if you're a hard-core enthusiast, you'll need hard-core hardware, because all the visual splendor requires a lot of PC. I recently upgraded and I previously had an i5-2500k running at 4Ghz with 16GB DDR3 memory and a GTX-970 video card, and I had to tone down some of the visuals to get a comfortable frame rate at 1080/60Hz in DCS World. On my new rig that I recently built I'm doing far better with an i5 9600K at 5.1Ghz with 16GB of DDR4, and an RTX-2060 6GB video card on a 1080/144Hz monitor, with a lot more visual bells and whistles enabled. It really is gorgeous. The cockpit detail is unbelievable too. They always were a step above others at that stuff.
This is truly today's Falcon 4.0 in a sense. It by far is the most popular simulation out there for the hard-core enthusiast. It even has Virtual Reality (VR) support for current VR gear. There really isn't much easy about this product either. I mean pre-flight can take a long time. Clicking and starting up every dial and system just to take off. There are a few cold start missions... where you're up and running on the runway, but the experience is there for those willing to take the challenge, and what a challenge it is. Personally the older I get, the less I find this appealing. I do however applaud them for the depth of the simulation, it's truly impressive. There's even the means to be ground vehicles with the Combined Arms module.
Where they make their money are the modules, and the variety of planes is astounding that they have to offer. Su-27, Su-33, F-15C/F-15E, F-16C, F/A-18C, F-5E, AV-8B, MiG-15, MiG-25, BF-109, Spitfire, that's just to name a few! There's also new campaigns and terrain sets you can purchase as well. Some modules are created by third-parties too. The upcoming F-14 Tomcat module has everyone excited, and from what I've seen of it from Heatblur Simulations...it's going to be a hit, and has created a lot of buzz.
This is where I'm torn. I know flight-sims were always expensive to develop, but the modules are expensive, and really aren't a complete game like say Falcon 4.0 was out of the box, and other products like it. I have a hard time knocking them, because while I "get it". At the same time I just think $50-$80 for a single plane to plug into a sandbox world is still a lot. I know we live in a day and age of “Pay-2-Win” and micro-transactions, so I'm trying hard not to be too critical.
I think a few bucks at a time is reasonable, versus $80 up front all at once, that really turns me off. In their defense I will say that they do have a lot of great sales, and I was about to take the plunge and get the Flaming Cliffs 3 module, which is essentially an upgrade to the previous LOMAC Flaming Cliffs products, that plug right into DCS World. Sadly I missed that sale by a day or so, and my only other big gripe is previous DCS titles I own like Black Shark and Flaming Cliffs 2 won't run in DCS World, and apparently there WAS at one time an upgrade path for Black Shark owners to go to Black Shark 2, but the web-store says no longer available.
Overall I think it's an amazing product, one that has the respect of the hard-core community, but freshly downloaded and without spending a penny it's a bit on the bland and boring side, because the Mustang and the Su-25 are just bland and boring planes too me. I haven't had a chance to see any of the modules first-hand yet. So I can't speak of the quality or value, only what I've seen in YouTube videos by others can I assume that they're a decent value if you're looking for a single air-frame at a time to master. With no other real competition out there DCS-World has the monopoly on hard-core military aviation simulations.
So it's now 2019, and I'm sad to say there's still not a lot going on for flight-sim enthusiasts, but out of the ashes it seems one company has been busy catering to the hard-core crowd, and they're the only one to have stayed the course. The Fighter Collection and Eagle Dynamics are essentially what once was the guys who brought us SU-27 Flanker, and later LOMAC (Lock On: Modern Air Combat), Black Shark, and now Digital Combat Simulator World, or DCS World for short.
DCS World is a free-2-play (F2P) sandbox world. With it you get a TF-51-Mustang and the Su-25T to fly for free. You can create your own missions and campaigns, and a mission generator gives you a lot to do. The graphics are truly some of the best I've ever seen in a PC flight-sim. While they do claim it offers “casual play” as well, this is a hard-core flight simulation, just like their previous stand alone Black Shark and A-10 products were years ago, and then some. I can't say there's much "casual" about it.
It's no surprise that if you're a hard-core enthusiast, you'll need hard-core hardware, because all the visual splendor requires a lot of PC. I recently upgraded and I previously had an i5-2500k running at 4Ghz with 16GB DDR3 memory and a GTX-970 video card, and I had to tone down some of the visuals to get a comfortable frame rate at 1080/60Hz in DCS World. On my new rig that I recently built I'm doing far better with an i5 9600K at 5.1Ghz with 16GB of DDR4, and an RTX-2060 6GB video card on a 1080/144Hz monitor, with a lot more visual bells and whistles enabled. It really is gorgeous. The cockpit detail is unbelievable too. They always were a step above others at that stuff.
This is truly today's Falcon 4.0 in a sense. It by far is the most popular simulation out there for the hard-core enthusiast. It even has Virtual Reality (VR) support for current VR gear. There really isn't much easy about this product either. I mean pre-flight can take a long time. Clicking and starting up every dial and system just to take off. There are a few cold start missions... where you're up and running on the runway, but the experience is there for those willing to take the challenge, and what a challenge it is. Personally the older I get, the less I find this appealing. I do however applaud them for the depth of the simulation, it's truly impressive. There's even the means to be ground vehicles with the Combined Arms module.
Where they make their money are the modules, and the variety of planes is astounding that they have to offer. Su-27, Su-33, F-15C/F-15E, F-16C, F/A-18C, F-5E, AV-8B, MiG-15, MiG-25, BF-109, Spitfire, that's just to name a few! There's also new campaigns and terrain sets you can purchase as well. Some modules are created by third-parties too. The upcoming F-14 Tomcat module has everyone excited, and from what I've seen of it from Heatblur Simulations...it's going to be a hit, and has created a lot of buzz.
This is where I'm torn. I know flight-sims were always expensive to develop, but the modules are expensive, and really aren't a complete game like say Falcon 4.0 was out of the box, and other products like it. I have a hard time knocking them, because while I "get it". At the same time I just think $50-$80 for a single plane to plug into a sandbox world is still a lot. I know we live in a day and age of “Pay-2-Win” and micro-transactions, so I'm trying hard not to be too critical.
I think a few bucks at a time is reasonable, versus $80 up front all at once, that really turns me off. In their defense I will say that they do have a lot of great sales, and I was about to take the plunge and get the Flaming Cliffs 3 module, which is essentially an upgrade to the previous LOMAC Flaming Cliffs products, that plug right into DCS World. Sadly I missed that sale by a day or so, and my only other big gripe is previous DCS titles I own like Black Shark and Flaming Cliffs 2 won't run in DCS World, and apparently there WAS at one time an upgrade path for Black Shark owners to go to Black Shark 2, but the web-store says no longer available.
Overall I think it's an amazing product, one that has the respect of the hard-core community, but freshly downloaded and without spending a penny it's a bit on the bland and boring side, because the Mustang and the Su-25 are just bland and boring planes too me. I haven't had a chance to see any of the modules first-hand yet. So I can't speak of the quality or value, only what I've seen in YouTube videos by others can I assume that they're a decent value if you're looking for a single air-frame at a time to master. With no other real competition out there DCS-World has the monopoly on hard-core military aviation simulations.
WarThunder
Next up is a product that I really didn't think I'd like. WarThunder is a product from Gaijin Entertainment. It can be played on the PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 all three. I saw it pop up on my Xbox a number of times and thought it can't be all that great if it's a console game too. These guys did one of the later IL-2 titles “Birds of Prey” in 2009-ish on the PC, and is the largest independent video games developer in Russia.
This is also a free-2-play simulation, which has both arcade and simulation modes, and is filled with micro-transactions. However I've been getting through it just fine without spending a penny so far. It takes longer to “research” and “upgrade” planes to unlock the next one, without spending money on the premium currency, but I haven't given up yet.
I think what sparked my interest was the videos I saw of the modern area tanks and planes in Warthunder. This isn't just a single era product... you begin with pre WWI planes, and can reach at present up to the Cold War era jet planes, but I've even seen a more modern M1 Abrams tank for ground vehicles recently too. While WarThunder encompasses Air/Sea/Land, with planes, naval units and ground units all three... you can also essentially pick a type and stick with it just the same if you wanted too. That's pretty much what I've done... I've stuck with American planes and so far so good. There are numerous nations represented, but I've found that it's best to stick with one at a time.
The graphics are really pretty, and quite impressive. I think what I really find amazing is how clearly optimized it is, because I'm easily getting as high as 250fps, and I haven't seen lower than about 150fps in a furball. The terrain is populated with loads of trees, buildings, etc, what you'd expect to see on the ground, and the plane detail is truly impressive on every plane I've seen so far.
Handling is a mixed bag, I think a lot has to do with that fact I'm using a HOTAS setup, and aiming with a joystick is hard, but with some patience and the help of YouTube I found some information on just how to “tweak” the settings to make a joystick/HOTAS setup work in WarThunder better. Literally setting up a joystick was the absolute most frustrating thing I've ever done in the 30+ years now that I've played flight-sims on a PC. It's ridiculous. On the other hand the variety of tweaks that can be made, can help fine tune things better than I've ever seen, but is also what makes it so damn hard.
Even in the more simulation-like modes, it's not a hard-core flight-sim, but I feel the sensation of flight is believable, and there's definitely more levels of complexity as you ramp up into what they consider the more realistic flight modes. I also like the damage modeling, as it goes rather in-depth. I've seen my AI gunner in the back seat of my bomber end up incapacitated during a fight, and there are oil leaks and other possible failures, that level of damage even occurs in the Arcade battles!
What I'm not looking forward to is the long-ass grind to the more modern era. I've never been a huge fan of the propeller-driven-age of flight-sims, and they recently introduced the Mi-24 HIND and AH-1 Cobra, and the Korean-War-Era planes look like great fun too, but I have a feeling based on what others told me... without paying for a premium account, or spending money to boost my research I may be looking at 3-years of playing before I ever get there. /Sigh.
The very nicest planes are purchasable too, as expected, but I really feel up until this point I've done quite well with the freebie stuff, and I'm having a blast playing. I can't say I'll still be at this in a year, because if progress slows to a crawl I may just get frustrated and rage-quit, who wouldn't? But they've definitely done a good job of holding that carrot over my head with what I've seen of the later tier planes and now helicopters that I really want to fly. I have a feeling I'll be playing this for a while yet.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
I'll be the first to admit, I've never really been a fan of, or given a chance to a console flight-sim/game. To me not being able to use a stick and throttle sucks the immersion factor right out of it for me, and using a console controller took me years to master. I also have to admit that I fought off the urge to console game for years. I've owned pretty much every one, and dabbled over the years as my boys had them. About 3 years ago I gave in, and I got serious with the Xbox One, then Xbox One S and now Xbox One X and my awesome 4k 70inch HDR LG TV. So when I saw Ace Combat 7 coming out, and I saw the visuals... I gave in again. I got it first on the Xbox One X a few months ago when it released on the consoles. Man is it great fun, and then I realized they have it on the PC too now months later. So I had to give it a try on my first favorite platform!
First off I was completely disappointed that there's literally no joystick support for the majority of sticks and HOTAS gear out there. Thrustmaster came out with a T-Flight Hotas for the Xbox/PC and for the PS4/PC, both worked on the one console it was branded for, and had a switch to allow them both to be used as a PC peripheral. They're both branded Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on the stick, but are really just re-branded T-Flight HOTAS that they released before for each console.
Of course since I was an Xbox One gamer now I purchased one. This was before the PC version came out, because I had to fly with a HOTAS on my Xbox! Without a desk in front of me, sitting on the couch or my recliner like I normally do to console game... I just didn't find the stick better than using the controller, which I was already decent with.
So the PC version comes out a few months later, and I didn't waste time getting it. The ONLY controller it supports is the branded T-Flight Hotas One (or PS4 version). Not being able to use my better T1600 FCS HOTAS is a real bummer, because now I have to plug in the T-Flight HOTAS One when I want to play AC7, and go through all the nonsense when I unplug it to get my proper HOTAS gear back and recognized by my other games as the primary controller in Windows 10. Damn you NAMCO!
Anyway, AC7 with the T-Flight HOTAS it's definitely a lot more fun, and while it's 4k 60Hz on my Xbox One X and my 70inch LG 4K HDR TV... at 1080 144Hz with all the bells and whistles flipped on, it somehow looks better and plays even more fluid to me now on the PC. Plus using a stick and throttle, even one a little less quality than my primary HOTAS is still far more immersive than using a mouse and keyboard.
The game itself has more cool and experimental aircraft than I can name in a single breath. You start off with an F-16, and depending the version you get an F4 Phantom and F-104 even, not too far in the F-14 Tomcat, and as you make your way through you can earn/purchase F15s, MiG29s, even Mirage2000s, F-35s, even really exotic stuff like Su-30/33/34/35/47/57. There's even some fictional plane called the X-02, that looks sick and is like a super duper fighter plane.
The missions are a nice mix of A2A and A2G fare, and there's definitely a few missions where you want to pull your hair out, because you can't figure out what you did wrong to fail. Some will require trial and error, or just giving in to YouTube-it and only then realize you're on a timer you didn't know you had to beat, or you just didn't pull off things fast enough.
It's pure arcade fun, but at times the sensation of flight is believable, but maneuvers really aren't. Being a game it works. Also there's definitely differences in handling and physics between the various aircraft, so it's arcade fun, but they tried to make you feel like flying a bunch of different planes. The hard-core crowd probably can't stomach it, but I found it to be great fun, and something you can literally pick up and fly a few missions to blow off some steam with. With a variety of difficulty levels the replay value is there, more so since you will definitely want to refly missions once you've have unlocked all the super sexy planes outfitted with gear you didn't have before on the first pass.
There's a multiplayer element too, and with it you can earn the currency to buy new, and upgrade existing planes, as you can in the solo game. Even if it was a ton of shooting off long range missiles are incredibly close range than you'd think possible, it's still great fun. Again, it is what it is, and I've always enjoyed the lite or survey simulations versus the single plane offerings.
The only thing that bored me to tears was the story. I think it's because it's a NAMCO thing, and you can tell it's a Japanese anime-inspired story, and that stuff never did interest me, so I tended to do a lot of skipping cut-scenes, and just getting to the missions. I am however surprised by just how many people love the story, and they make memes and comments about it day in and day out on the sub-redit for AC7. It has a following, and because of this I also downloaded and tried Ace Combat 6 now, which is also fun.
I'll be the first to admit, I've never really been a fan of, or given a chance to a console flight-sim/game. To me not being able to use a stick and throttle sucks the immersion factor right out of it for me, and using a console controller took me years to master. I also have to admit that I fought off the urge to console game for years. I've owned pretty much every one, and dabbled over the years as my boys had them. About 3 years ago I gave in, and I got serious with the Xbox One, then Xbox One S and now Xbox One X and my awesome 4k 70inch HDR LG TV. So when I saw Ace Combat 7 coming out, and I saw the visuals... I gave in again. I got it first on the Xbox One X a few months ago when it released on the consoles. Man is it great fun, and then I realized they have it on the PC too now months later. So I had to give it a try on my first favorite platform!
First off I was completely disappointed that there's literally no joystick support for the majority of sticks and HOTAS gear out there. Thrustmaster came out with a T-Flight Hotas for the Xbox/PC and for the PS4/PC, both worked on the one console it was branded for, and had a switch to allow them both to be used as a PC peripheral. They're both branded Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on the stick, but are really just re-branded T-Flight HOTAS that they released before for each console.
Of course since I was an Xbox One gamer now I purchased one. This was before the PC version came out, because I had to fly with a HOTAS on my Xbox! Without a desk in front of me, sitting on the couch or my recliner like I normally do to console game... I just didn't find the stick better than using the controller, which I was already decent with.
So the PC version comes out a few months later, and I didn't waste time getting it. The ONLY controller it supports is the branded T-Flight Hotas One (or PS4 version). Not being able to use my better T1600 FCS HOTAS is a real bummer, because now I have to plug in the T-Flight HOTAS One when I want to play AC7, and go through all the nonsense when I unplug it to get my proper HOTAS gear back and recognized by my other games as the primary controller in Windows 10. Damn you NAMCO!
Anyway, AC7 with the T-Flight HOTAS it's definitely a lot more fun, and while it's 4k 60Hz on my Xbox One X and my 70inch LG 4K HDR TV... at 1080 144Hz with all the bells and whistles flipped on, it somehow looks better and plays even more fluid to me now on the PC. Plus using a stick and throttle, even one a little less quality than my primary HOTAS is still far more immersive than using a mouse and keyboard.
The game itself has more cool and experimental aircraft than I can name in a single breath. You start off with an F-16, and depending the version you get an F4 Phantom and F-104 even, not too far in the F-14 Tomcat, and as you make your way through you can earn/purchase F15s, MiG29s, even Mirage2000s, F-35s, even really exotic stuff like Su-30/33/34/35/47/57. There's even some fictional plane called the X-02, that looks sick and is like a super duper fighter plane.
The missions are a nice mix of A2A and A2G fare, and there's definitely a few missions where you want to pull your hair out, because you can't figure out what you did wrong to fail. Some will require trial and error, or just giving in to YouTube-it and only then realize you're on a timer you didn't know you had to beat, or you just didn't pull off things fast enough.
It's pure arcade fun, but at times the sensation of flight is believable, but maneuvers really aren't. Being a game it works. Also there's definitely differences in handling and physics between the various aircraft, so it's arcade fun, but they tried to make you feel like flying a bunch of different planes. The hard-core crowd probably can't stomach it, but I found it to be great fun, and something you can literally pick up and fly a few missions to blow off some steam with. With a variety of difficulty levels the replay value is there, more so since you will definitely want to refly missions once you've have unlocked all the super sexy planes outfitted with gear you didn't have before on the first pass.
There's a multiplayer element too, and with it you can earn the currency to buy new, and upgrade existing planes, as you can in the solo game. Even if it was a ton of shooting off long range missiles are incredibly close range than you'd think possible, it's still great fun. Again, it is what it is, and I've always enjoyed the lite or survey simulations versus the single plane offerings.
The only thing that bored me to tears was the story. I think it's because it's a NAMCO thing, and you can tell it's a Japanese anime-inspired story, and that stuff never did interest me, so I tended to do a lot of skipping cut-scenes, and just getting to the missions. I am however surprised by just how many people love the story, and they make memes and comments about it day in and day out on the sub-redit for AC7. It has a following, and because of this I also downloaded and tried Ace Combat 6 now, which is also fun.
Mechwarrior Online
I know this isn't a flight-sim, however back in 95 Activision's Mechwarrior 2 and US Navy Fighters from EA are the two products that encouraged me to take the plunge and purchase my first Thrustmaster gear HOTAS setup. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I drove 30-miles to the nearest COMP-USA store and I'm pretty sure I dumped like $400 for my F-16 FLCS stick, TQS Throttle Quadrant, and RCS Rudder Pedals. I truly couldn't make it back home fast enough!
Nothing felt more like piloting a 100-ton Battlemech than having that gear. The mouse and keyboard just didn't cut it, and the moment I plugged those in and booted up Mechwarrior 2 in DOS...I was blown away, and I truly felt like I was THE Battlemech. I was never near a city that offered the cockpit style BattleTech Centers, so this was as close as I could get. Back then you couldn't convince me that they would be any better than my Thrustmaster HOTAS gear and my 17-inch monitor (which at the time most had 13-14 inch monitors, 15s were for rich people and 17s were even more expensive than that!)
Of course I played every iteration of Mechwarrior and Battletech on the PC after MW2 (I missed out on the CompuServe Battletech game, because I couldn't afford the long-distance phone calls to reach them back then. Besides, MW2 and all that came after were truly better in every way.) The new Battletech game is also worthy of mention, even if it's only a strategy game from overhead. God damn it looks good too!
Skip ahead to Mechwarrior Online. I played this at launch with my X-52 Pro HOTAS gear, and my PC at the time had dual GTX-460 video cards in SLI, and while I enjoyed the feel of it, it just didn't pull me in. Early on it seemed bland, and really didn't impress me, that is outside of the visuals. It always looked damn nice, and I've always LOVED Battletech and the Mechs. Over the past few months I built a new gaming/sim PC, and wanted to dive into titles I could take full advantage of my HOTAS gear with, and Mechwarrior Online was one of the first I revisited.
It didn't take long to fall in love with this game. There was soooooo many more Mechs now, and they cycle the Trail Mechs (the free mechs they give you to play with, but you can't earn all the needed currency with), so there's a bunch more variety to start with. I counted 12 Trial Mechs at the time of writing this. I've always enjoyed the Heavy and Assault class Mechs the most, and after running the Trial-Mechs long enough to earn some C-Bills (primary currency in-game, which can be earned even with a Trial-Mech), I purchased my first Timber Wolf/Mad Cat the Timber Wolf Prime.
Like all of the Mechwarrior games before it, you can really customize away when it comes to your Mech itself. The level of customization if insanely in-depth. However like all games with micro-transactions, this one too will cost you if you want to "Pimp my Mech" with various in-cockpit trinkets from mini figs, to speakers and candles, and external visual fluff like giant chainsaw hands, and jet engine backpacks. It's pretty cool and silly some of the stuff you can do. While they do sell a lot of these "fluff" items, they do run a ton of events constantly which rewards players with new Mechs even, and in cockpit trinkets and so on. So while the mico-transactions clearly keep the lights on for the devs, they are also generous enough to give the players a lot of opportunities to get by just fine on hard work alone. Recently I earned enough C-Bills to buy a new Atlas Assault Mech by completing challenges in-game.
In-game comms works great, and I now am playing with people with a headset, and we cooperate as a team should. There's also so many more maps, so many more ways to play, compared to how it was when it launched. They tend to cycle the maps and you have no true control over what map or game type you end up with, but in between matches everyone votes on what one we end up with, from a pre determined variety of maps, and two different game types.
Let me step back for a second, because I know many will say “this isn't the best game for a stick or HOTAS gear”. There's some truth to that, because a mouse if far more precise for aiming and moving than my HOTAS gear setup. But using a mouse and keyboard doesn't “feel” the same to me. It's far less immersive. So while a mouse/keyboard player can indeed be more precise faster than I can be with my HOTAS, I still “feel” more immersed, and it helps me enjoy the game more.
At almost 49 years old now, I really could care less what ranking I end up at. There's Tier5 through Tier1, and I'm yet to make it out of Tier5, and I don't care. I have seen some setups where a player uses the joystick to control forward/back and torso twist on a stick, and uses the extra buttons for other various settings like zoom, imaging settings, firing specific weapon groups, etc, off the stick, and still use the mouse for aiming. That looks rather interesting and I'd imagine very effective, but to me a throttle in my left-hand, and a stick in my right-hand is the most immersive way to play. I'm also just old and set in my ways I guess, but I'm having fun which is what is most important.
Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
There's currently a Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries stand alone game in development, which is set for release September 2019. I pre-ordered it and in doing so I was given $50 or more worth of in-game goodies to be used in Mechwarrior Online right now. That was a deal that was too good to pass up, because it was like spending $50 on Mechwarrior Online and getting Mercs free upon release! There's $50, $80 and $120 packages for the pre-order, and upping the funds ups the amount of stuff you get now in Mechwarrior Online as well.
It's well worth looking into if you are even remotely interested in one or the other.
Honorable Mention...
There's definitely a few other titles some people will say I should have mentioned, so I'll go through the ones I'm aware of but that I don't have a lot of experience with, and some that I've played first-hand as well.
World of Warplanes...
There's World of Warplanes from the World of Tanks people. At a glance all I could think of was World of Tanks when I fiddled with the ground vehicles in Warthunder. It's pretty clear that Warthunder was definitely inspired by the trio of titles Wargaming.net has to offer, only they offer them as three separate products.
I did some brief research on World of Warplanes, and what I saw led me to believe that Warthunder was a better overall product. The primary factor was all the YouTube videos I saw comparing the two, the one common issue was the frame rate of World of Warplanes. I'm killing it with 250fps, and no less than 100 in the most busy situation in Warthunder, and every video I saw in comparison World of Warplanes was chugging along at 17-50fps, while they had much higher FPS overall in Warthunder. To me in any flight simulation performance is key to smooth flight, so after seeing that over and over I figured why bother, and completely lost interest in even trying World of Warplanes.
Arma 3: Jets and Helicopters DLC...
The Arma franchise of games while mostly First Person Shooter-driven primarily, in recent years they've included vehicles, and Arma 3 actually had two DLC packs called Jets and Helicopters. Since I had Arma 3 on my son's Steam account already, I went ahead and shelled out the $16 for the DLC add on bundle on sale that gave me both, along with some other DLC content for the game.
I'll be the first to admit, I haven't had time to dig deep into it yet, but it includes... The F/A-181 Black Wasp II, F/A-181 Black Wasp II (Stealth), To-201 Shikra, To-201 Shikra (Stealth), A-149 Gryphon And the Sentinel UCAV. I did zip around off an aircraft carrier with the Hornet and took out some ground targets, and I dabbled with flying an instant action type mission in a chopper, and felt like this is definitely something I want to spend more time with eventually.
X-Wing Special Edition and TIE Fighter Special Edition
Yes I'm aware these are games from 1993 and 1994. One of which is literally THE game that encouraged me to jump to PC gaming in the first place. I had played tons of flight-sims on Amiga and Atari ST computers my friends had. I had just purchased an Amiga CD-32 (truly the first 32-bit gaming console, which played special versions of Amiga games on CD). Days later I was reading PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World in print and saw the full page ad for TIE Fighter and was blown away. I HAD TO PLAY THIS GAME!
I immediately found a friend who thought my Amiga CD-32 was the coolest thing ever, and for then it was, so I sold it to him. Next I bought a PC a 486 DX-33 with 4MB of memory, which was like as expensive as buying a damn car. I visited the local Electronics Boutique only to find that TIE Fighter hadn't been released yet! Depressed I began to walk away, and the clerk said but wait we have this... it was X-Wing on 3.5 floppy! I purchased it and the expansion pack, and they happened to have a 3.5 floppy demo of TIE Fighter too that just came in a few days prior, and I flew home at light-speed to play.
Clueless of MS-DOS... I had to call the store back to help me install and then C:/Xwing/Xwing.exe (or what ever the command was) away I went, and the day TIE Fighter was released I had it too. Needless to say when Good Old Games and Steam brought out these old games ready to be played again in Windows 7/8/10 I had to have them!
Ironically they both also require having a joystick now, and while neither will recognize my throttle, I can program the buttons with my Thrustmaster software to handle key-presses, and the stick itself works great. Graphically it's not going to blow anyone away by today's standards, but both are super good fun, and the story is really cool as well. I actually still have the Farlander Papers and Steele Chronicles books that only both of the original 3.5 DOS floppy versions of each came with. On sale they may be $5 each, and well worth the price of admission for any Star Wars enthusiast. At present they're $10 each, but watch for the sales, these two are always cheap. They also have X-Wing VS TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance and even Balance of Power expansion for XvT, all of which are also fully Windows 10 compatible. Good stuff man.
SGW Legends
Star Wars Galaxies from Sony Online Entertainment truly was the spiritual successor to the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. Yes it was an Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. It was a sandbox with so many ground breaking features, and they took chances and did things that even MMO games today still can't top. Like the means to create complete cities on any of the various planets, and to arrange the housing anyway you see fit. To use any single 3d object you can carry in your inventory as decor in your own homes.
The Jump To Lightspeed expansion pack for the original game opened the door to a place I'd have spent the years 2004-2011 on the PC religiously. The space content is like a space simulation, with careers and content driven to keep players busy well beyond completing their first pilot career ace status. Visually speaking it still looks good too, it's what we wished X-Wing and TIE Fighter had really looked like.
The game also features a loot system, which allows you to continually try beating the random number generator system (RNG) to find a gun, engine, piece of armor, capacitor, reactor, or shield system with a single stat to help you outfit your ship better than you thought previously possible via their Reverse Engineering system. The number of ships is impressive, and each faction Rebel, Imperial and Freelance have loads of very unique ships to choose from. Each ship has a specific set amount of mass to deal with, and outfitting a ship is a constant battle to find the lowest mass parts possible, with the highest possible performance. So it's somewhat of an end-game that never ends, and keeps you interested.
At present there's also a possible 3 factions worth of content you can choose from, each with 3 squadron careers to complete from under each. Overall you can earn top Ace status 9 times if you like, and achieve Aces of Aces title and status. Ace of Aces is something the game never had on the live SOE servers, because SWG Legends is running modified game code, with exclusive content to SWG Legends. They've added loads more end-game content for pilots too.
SWG Legends is an EMU (Emulator Server), it's privately ran, and they don't ask for donations, but they are given them by many to keep it running, and the developers there have created content, and tweaked the space loot system making it the very best version of Star Wars Galaxies JTL there ever was! Best of all, they continue developing for it. In addition too all of the awesome stuff they did for the space side of things, it's also a fully working version of how the game played in 2011, but with improvements. I still play it to this day. It does have a hard time with multiple USB device controllers, which is why I kept my single USB connector Saitek X52 Pro for so long. I am now able to use my new Thrustmaster FCS HOTAS software to bind both the throttle and stick into a single virtual device that SWG Legends sees. I'm now enjoying it all over again with my new HOTAS gear.
Conclusion
That pretty much wraps it up. I've had the most fun on a PC I've had in years over the past few months. I think getting new HOTAS gear, which then sparked me to first upgrade my existing PC (I upgraded my video card first, and wanted more), and then led to me building an entirely new PC has opened the door to PC gaming and simulations again, and I'm loving it.
I'll soon dive more in-depth into my new Thrustmaster FCS HOTAS and T.Flight Hotas One here as well, and I plan to look at a variety of other games, simulations and tabletop products again here at WarGameGuru. Stay tuned there's more to come!
That pretty much wraps it up. I've had the most fun on a PC I've had in years over the past few months. I think getting new HOTAS gear, which then sparked me to first upgrade my existing PC (I upgraded my video card first, and wanted more), and then led to me building an entirely new PC has opened the door to PC gaming and simulations again, and I'm loving it.
I'll soon dive more in-depth into my new Thrustmaster FCS HOTAS and T.Flight Hotas One here as well, and I plan to look at a variety of other games, simulations and tabletop products again here at WarGameGuru. Stay tuned there's more to come!
