What our customer's say!"Simply the Best", The Golden Era of PC-based flight simulation began with Microprose F19 Stealth Fighter, and it ended with Falcon 4.0. As a real pilot who has played every single flight sim worth playing for the last 25 years, I'm comfortable saying that Jane's WWII Fighters is in the top 3 of all time, period.
It is worth installing a W98 emulator on your modern PC so that you can have the experience of flying this sim. Quite simply, if you want to do what the real WWII fighter pilots did - search the skies for the enemy, get shot at by flak guns, strafe trains and other ground targets and get into frantic, adrenaline-pumping dogfights with steely-eyed Germans over hostile territory, this sim puts you in that place like nothing before or since.
The airplanes have just the right combination of realistic flight model, available systems and visual/audio effects to be entertaining without being overwhelming to the non-pilot. The AI is challenging enough to give you a workout, but also makes you want to dogfight real people online - something that I did for years and that was absolutely the height of PC-based air combat.
Finally, the Mission Creator was the ultimate geek tool. Using it, you could craft unbelievably realistic WWII flying missions that involved takeoffs, landings and everything in between from escorting bombers to bombing things yourself, all while being fired at by Wirbelwinds, 88's and German aircraft. I can still remember the thrill of dogfighting the Me-262 in a P-51 and reminding the Germans that (in the words of Chuck Yeager,) "it isn't the machine, it's the man."
The days when we were hoping for Jane's to release the Pacific version of this stellar and incomparable sim are long gone. Jane's died as a PC flight simulation maker, along with basically everyone else except for a few 800 lb gorillas like Microsoft. At this point, all we can do is hope that SOMEONE recognizes what a great sim this is, and decides to update it for XP. It happened with Falcon 4.0, and it would really be worth doing with Jane's WWII Fighters.
"The Bomber crews called them,"Little Friends".", This is a great game. My thoughts are everywhere on this,,,,,so bear with me.
Played on a 733mhz system, you can keep it going well, with very very little problems.
If the creators of this game had insight for education, its with the crucial video interviews and clips of the real-life Aces of that time; Anderson, Rall, Rupinski!!!! HOLY COW!!! these insights and words are history of both sides. I'd like to have had perhaps a 2nd disc of just these guys talking about their aircraft, encounters and tactics alone! Please make a part 2 of this game! You can easily broaden the spectrum of theater of operations, aircraft and adversary.
I concur with some feedback about the vocal inflight statements, it does get boring, but thats the limit of the disc.
Sometimes, in single mission scenarios, you think you've gotten all the bombers, only to return home and get a failure rating. When replayed, you realize that there might be some aircraft on the ground, somehow the props still turning on one or two engines, but still considered not killed for your credit.....well, just strafe the heck out of them, if you can find them on the ground.
The enemy AA-fire on mobile systems is deadly.
Troops don't shoot at you.........they should give some small-arms fire for defence.
Theres not alot of Heavy AA-fire against bombers until they get over target area.....take for example, when you play the newest games version of "B-17:Flying Fortress".......thats serious enemy territory AA-fire in sound and graphic, when played on a serious sound system, it takes you by surprise and plants your seat in the middle of the scene.
It would be nice to stay with one squadron the entire campaign, and only upgrade your aircraft if you wish;why change planes for the sake of change?
Some other simulations years ago,(Fighters over Europe/Fighters over Pacific) let you stay with a factual fighter squadron, that left you in a strategic or tactical role.
Counter-strikes on V-rocket sites, interdiction on D-Day?
Id also like to have seen more aircraft types: ME-410, ME-210, Mosquito(variant types!!), Tempest, Stuka, ME-163, HE-162. What about Night-Fighters???!!! German OWL's were very formidable!
How about commanding a C-47 with Troopers dropping in Normandy?
Target Recon missions in Mosquitos or the variant of the Mustang/Spitfires?
Are you guys Hiring??? Let me at'em!
You could spin off the Eastern Front, Pacific Theater, Battle of Britain, Midway, Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, the Med, fly supplies thru the Hump of Burma/India, it goes on and on.......C'mon Janes......run with it, make it strong,,,and we the gamers will eat it up!
OK, now, back to this one......
The first time you get seriously taken out of the sky.........you wont forget it; "Abshuss" ='s Kill! as its said in the Luftwaffee.
I think the Fw-190 should have at least 4 of the variants,(a1,a8,D9 and G models)
I think the ME-109's should have the E, G, and especially(!!!) the -K models, for the faster -51 encounters.
P-51B,C and D's.
The only thing I found a problem with is this. Say you've completed a ground attack.....you've got extra goodies to deliver; rockets, bombs, bullets. You find other ground targets on the way back, in local area, and hit them.........your success has no influence on the games outcome with going out and finding more than the mission asked. Hmphf.
The graphics are good, the play is good...you will enjoy this game.....even if its exploring the museums, listening to the music.
Flight is solid....and as said before.....you may find yourself bored in some moments on the path, but thats always the case....."hours of boredom sometimes followed by frenzied moments of panic".
"The WWII Fighter game Ever", If you have a slow comp It will work fast also it does not look bad. It comes with many more things to.
"Excellent Game...got me interested in WWII", Janes World War II Fighters is a great game. It includes 7 planes -- 4 from the Allies (USA and Britain), and, of course, 3 from the Axis (Germany only). All of these planes are a joy to fly, once you get used to their diverse handling methods. All aspects of the game are high quality, and really give you the feeling that you are in the cockpit of a World War II era plane. After all, that's what sims are for.
The game is really fun to play. It offers a little something for everyone...if you are a flight sim fanatic, you can turn realism settings on high. If you are an arcade fan, you can turn them down. The game also offers training missions which include such things as how to take off, how to land, how to dive bomb...etc. They're really helpful! Also, there are a bunch of play modes. Single Mission -- which lets you pick pre-existing missions. My favorite was an allied mission, in which you were a German fighter who realized Germany was going to be beaten, so you steal a Me 262 and fly it to an Allied base...with two other 262's on your tail! Anyway, Campaign -- lets you fly in a Campaign for either the Allies or the Axis powers...which is really fun. The only problem with that is that you don't get to pick a particular plane and fly it every time...for instance, I really suck with a P-38J...and I'd like to fly a Mustang every mission, if for nothing more than the fact that I'd get really good with it. Mission builder -- is pretty fun, but it takes a while to get used to. The readme on triggers is really helpful for that, though. Quick Mission -- lets you pick what plane you want to fly in, how many wingman you have, how many enemies you have (and you can even have Axis Fighters versus Axis. It's pretty cool seeing 109's fight each other) time of day, weapon loadout, and many other things. Overall, great gameplay!
The graphics are good, but on my system, I experience a lot of slowdown...even with a lot of features turned down or off (like 3D clouds, detail, etc.) That would be so bad, but with the system I'm playing on...I expect a smooth framerate. That only occurs when a whole lot is going on though, like 16 planes on your side, tanks on both sides, and enemy fighters...all doing their own thing.
The graphics quality is excellent...when I was flying a night mission, I just couldn't believe it was a game and not a movie I was playing. It looked so good, in fact, I could see the moon glimmering off of the paint of my Focke-Wulf! Amazing! Like I said, graphics are amazing, I just wish the frame rate was a little better.
Overall I would recommend this game to most people interested in the flight genre. Be forewarned, however, if you are playing this game with a Logitech Wingman Force you may experience some problems with the controls. For instance, sometimes the force feedback will just "turn off" after a mission is over. Other times, it will occur when you go to the main menu and then come back into your game. However, this only happened every so often, and really didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the game too much. However, it was significant enough to knock a star off of the review for it.
"Great WWII sim (circa 1999)", This sim came out in 1999 and, given the dearth of simulation/games devoted to WWII since then, it's still a near-cutting edge game.
Though its title makes it sound similar to other "Jane's Fighters" games like ATF or USNF '97 - and despite similar gameplay - the sound, graphics and organization of JWW2F put the game in a class by itself. You can probably guess the premise - fly single missions, campaigns or instant action in your choice of many WWII planes like the Mustang, Me-262 or Spitfire. If you've made short work of your computer's flying abilities, go on-line (though by the time you read this, Janes multi-player support will be long dead) and flame your best friends. The airplanes' exteriors look gorgeous - nowhere near as cartoonish as those on ATF/USNF. The interiors look pretty good to, really conveying the feeling of being inside a (likely) freezing P-51 flying against camouflaged Panzer tanks during the "Battle of the Bulge". If the effect isn't exactly spectacular, it's still an achievement considering that the interiors - like those on USNF/ATF - are really eye-candy: you can turn them on and off, so they're really extraneous. Despite their being unneccessary, EA deisgners decided against making the panels and frames of your cockpit look flat and unconvincing. Get a hit on your engine, and your plane will vibrate or spew oil - and boy will you notice that. Damage is also beefed up since ATF/USNF days, with damaged airplanes more prone to snap in two if forced to fly at the edge of their limits than undamaged airplanes. Different airplanes will fly different ways - I was able to outfly speedy Me-109 fighters as long as I could keep from flying the high-speed vertical maneauvers they favored. The tactic is harder to use against the Me-262, the Nazi's early jet (which will attack in pairs; the trick is to anticipate which of the jets is just leading you on, and which is really about to attack) but not impossible. If the sim has some realism flaws (mind you, I'm no pilot) some are likely unavoidable - like the fact that air combat was never a pure fighter war (for the allies over Europe, it may have been; the Germans contended, on the other hand, with bombers - both light and medium - tactical attack planes, recon fighters and other support craft; the Me-262 itself was never really contemplated as a fighter to fight other fighters, its acceleration and wing-loading made it best only for flying past escort screens and for being able to engage more waves of enemy bombers than older fighters). Velocity is modeled very well, as are the vaporous effects of clouds at different levels, and the fluidity of fire from stricken planes (I mostly saw my own). Ground detail was dissappointing, but this isn't a sim committed to low-level attack, so I was willing to overlook that. In short, sound and graphics make this a still superlative sim - not as demanding as UbiSoft's "IL-2". While you won't be able to import 3rd party airplanes or missions (as you may with Microsoft's CFS series, Janes offers more out of the box than that other game.
Performance: I ran this game with little problem on my Pentium IV, 2Ghz system using WinXP and a Geforce3 card. If you're looking for a great WWII game but feel intimidated by IL-2 (and have heard some bad news re: "Jane's Attack Squadron", I'd consider getting this game.
