Combat Flight Simulator 2.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)I've got Combat Flight Simulator-1 (CFS1 - Europe) but bought this one too for the naval aviation aspect, and thought it cheaper to buy CFS2 than the pacific expansion disks released for the older game. In CFS2, you fly fighter missions from Japanese or American island bases or carriers.
In many ways, CFS2 excels as an improvement over the older CFS1 (naval aviation aside), but is also a major disappointment for the exact same reason: if you own the older game as I do, you'll probably spend more time comparing it to the older game than enjoying it. Though the premise is different and sports a newer look between the missions (where the bleak look of CFS1 embodies Anglo fatalism, colorful comic-strip panels that seem inspired by nose-art ala Roy Lichtenstein and Yankee optimism dominates CFS2), the game never capitalizes enough on its newer concept to break away from CFS1. You're still in a pure fighter sim, using the same tactics and weapons as in CFS1. Terrain is a huge improvement, but the graphics quality of the aircraft is not. (Also, much of the terrain is lost since so much of the game occurs over water.) Smoking effects from wounded planes are an improvement but the sound/graphics related to enemy bullets is completely unconvincing (bullets sound as if they're whizzing past you, even while ventilating your Hellcat). The naval aviation aspects of CFS2 are also a mixed bag between "wow" and "huh?!" On the one hand, ships actually move (not like the perpetually parked steamers and U-Boats of CFS1) and even bob. On the other hand, the sim doesn't let you fly the planes that flew anti-shipping strikes: dive bombers and torpedo planes like the TBF or SBD, and none of your flyable planes are armed with torpedoes. Though ships are an improvement over those in CFS1, that's not saying much. While ships in CFS2 now move, burn, and even stop dead in the water before sinking, (rather than just disappear in a puff of polygon-fire) they otherwise slip quietly, and whole, beneath the Pacific - never breaking apart, listing or disgorging fuel or men like the game's planes (or those in "Their Finest Hour" of 1989). Your own aircraft carrier remains curiously pristine (considering how they were magnets for enemy planes) but also devoid of any activity - human or mechanical - unlike the airfields of CFS1. To help you land, there's an LSO (Landing Signal Officer), but he appears, not on the carrier, but in the "radar" window on your left side. Looking much like the AOL stick-figure, I can't imagine this guy guiding anybody up the gangplank, let alone talking a landing airplane onto the wire. (I've become proficient at carrier landings despite getting a "WAVE-OFF!" on every approach). He doesn't even speak - the LSO has a pretty finite number of phrases ("wave-off", "power", "raise altitude" or "you're too high" to think of a few). A talking LSO was a fixture of "F-14 Fleet Defender" (1994). Not that carrier-flying is an unwelcome challenge; it's just painfully obvious that nobody tried to make it cool. Campaigns are pre-scripted, though dynamic campaigns would probably be wasted on a sim of this type. That doesn't excuse an unnecessarily rigid mission requirement system that won't allow you to "jump" once you're out of ammo or damaged. That itself was not as problematic as the alternative - I was willing to fly back to my carrier in real time, only to find that the in-flight map brought me back to where my carrier had been when I launched, not where it had gotten to about 2 hours later!
In short, CFS2 is more of a game-engine than completed game. Likely, you can fill in the gaps described above with third-party software on the internet. But it's an insult that CFS2 is so far short of its potential out of the box. I bought the newer game because I expected more than an evolved form of CFS1 (I could've gotten that myself). That's a shame, because the sim itself is such a beaut - one in which those interested enough can learn about the mechanics of WWII engines, face the challenge of carrier-landing battle-damaged planes or triumph over the supremely nimble Japanese planes using dive-and-zoom techniques (rather than trying to out-turn them as pilots will try by instinct). It wasn't until I reached mid-1944 that I encountered clouds - but they were beautiful. For its faults, CFS2 is that rare sim that keeps you coming back, and goes to lengths to keep you out of "slew" mode.
I ran CFS 2 on a P4-2Ghz, WinXP w/game port controls. Graphics were acceptably fluid and there were no controllability problems, though load times are high. If you haven't bought any WWII sims since the mid-90's, I'd suggest this one. Otherwise, you'll have to weigh your interest in WWII naval aviation against the price of this one and your eagerness to have to customize a sim in ways you'd expect it to behave out of the box.

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