Secret Weapons Over Normandy

Gotta be the Spitfire, but with a maxed-out engine, especially on the Denmark mission – I find the Mosquito to be a tad too sluggish for that kind of work!

I find that on the Norwegian fjord mission (with the Highball) by sticking close to the deck – and by that I mean a ball-hair away from the water! – you can usually evade the Me262s, although you will get a bit shot up! I also usually find rockets or cannon to be effective against the barges, too.

Its really a shame that that game is done with arcade physics because the graphics and terrain mapping is some of the best Ive ever seen in a flight sim. Infact there is such a disregard for time/space relationships I would say its more cinematic than arcadeish, which for me is so bothersome as to make the game unplayable. If they could ever modify that game to have normal flight physics, maybe with a patch or something, I think that game could catch on big with the flight sim community.

Anyone have any favorite planes for the game? I prefer the Meteor and Hurricane for the campaign missions, while I always use the P-40 in two-player and instant action.

Favorite missions? I love Swordfish and Devastating, and I find that Denmark is fun once you learn what you have to do. A mission that always irritates me is the one where you have to bust the dam with the Highball. Those Me-262’s are such a pain in the ass! They simply eat you alive. And Midway is fun despite the lack of a save…at least until you get to the final part where you must hit the Japanese carrier in the Dauntless. The Zeros are relentless!

I have this game and I think its pretty enjoyable game. Nice not to have to worry about loads of different of commands and buttons etc for a change.

Son, peter (11yrs), bought this game with money sent to him by grandma. He has played it at least an hour a day for the past two months and considering the amount of distractions and other games available, this is high praise indeed!

Perhaps the ‘Flight Sim’ section – that covers historic too.

Hallelujah!

Someone who likes it as much as I do!! 🙂

Yes, I agree it’s a great fun game for the PS2, but I’ve been itching to play against a suitable opponent!

The carrier ops, with the Wildcat etc, I find to be very frustrating since you have to basically do the whole, three-part mission in one go, with no saves in between, unlike the others which you can do in, say, 15-20 minutes (although that mission over Denmark always gets my knickers in a twist!!).

I give it 9.5/10

For a moment I thought this had been moved by the Webbie!
Have a look over on the Historic forum, believe this thread has been going for a while… http://forum.airforces.info/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18266

Flood.

I’ve just finished writing a review of it for our electronic magazine at work:

Secret Weapons Over Normandy
A little while back, The Great Escape was fast becoming my favourite PS2 game. It’s been well and truly trounced by a game the likes of which I have been waiting for for years – Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

Combat flight simulations are as rare as hen’s teeth on console formats. They are mainly the reserve of the PC set, possibly because of the amount of controls needed to fly a frontline WW2 fighter plane can be more easily accommodated by the keys on a keyboard than on a game pad. When one does appear, it’s very likely a Top Gun-inspired, done-to-death Gulf War-type thing, or a very silly shoot-em-up.

Secret Weapons is different. Coming from the producers of the successful Star Wars simulator series, LucasArts, it is a combat flight sim with arcade-style gaming and physics thrown in. Unlike most combat flight sims, however, Secret Weapons has a storyline reminiscent of the Medal of Honor series that develops as the game, and the war, goes on. You play James Chase, an American volunteer flying with the RAF in the battle over Dunkirk in June 1940 and the Battle of Britain (July-October 1940) before being recruited to join a Special Operations Executive squadron: the Battlehawks. The Battlehawks begin flying a series of covert missions, which start off in Northern Europe, then to North Africa, Burma, flying in the Battle of Wake Island and some of the Pacific campaign against the Japanese, before inevitably heading back to take on the Germans in Fortress Europe itself. At least, that’s where I’m up to!

The action and gameplay is fast but smooth, the aircraft, scenery and other vehicles move and look very realistic right down the cartridge ejector chutes beneath the wings and the weathering of the paint. Naturally, with a game like this some liberties have to be taken with history and/or the aircraft themselves. A Spitfire, for instance, with about 2,400 rounds of ammunition, will get rid of that in 16 seconds, but your ammo in this lasts much, much longer! Also, the German fighter group Nemesis, set up specially to take on the Battlehawks, turns up with its Focke-Wulf 190s in Burma! Focke-Wulfs were never actually used in Burma, of course, but there is, naturally, a fully-explained reason for them to be there in the game. The controls of each aircraft are very easy to use and master, although you’ll find that aircraft such as the Spitfire are very sensitive (perhaps too much). Also, you’ll find that you can dogfight with an Me109 when using a Fairey Swordfish, an outdated biplane torpedo-bomber!!

Whenever you complete a mission, you unlock a new aircraft to use on a mission, and these can also be used in the “instant action” feature, where you can pit a team of aircraft up against another for a bit of a rumble in a match. You can also get to see video clips shot at the Air Museum Planes of Fame in California, which gives you something of the history behind the aircraft featured in the game, with commentaries by the pilots who flew them then and now.

Secret Weapons Over Normandy is a fine game, a bit out of the ordinary, but well worth the money. In fact, when I go home, I shall be hopping into the Spitfire for a rumble or three!

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/normandy/

I’ve got it on PS2 – it kicks ASS!

I’m on mission 8 – flying a Mosquito over Denmark – and have been playing since Saturday.

They may well have done! I know there’s a flight-sim download site someplace, but its URL escapes me. I know it ‘cos I attempted to download a CFS2 Spitfire XIV in the SL721 colour scheme, but it wouldn’t work, and it took me bloody ages to download! 😡

Yup – MCFS is okay I suppose, i did a multiplayer on it once and it was great but my friend wasn’t too experienced so it was a bit one sided – you can use a lead to connect ur PCs up.

I find the flight model isn’t as nice as that in euro air war, and the aircraft don’t look as good – generally it doesn’t have the playability to match european air war, but the fact u can choose from so many different aircraft is fanstastic!

Once I took on a bunch of fw190s with a vulcan armed with 20 mm cannon – takes dive and zoom to a new level 🙂

I love flying the Oscar in MCFS – it’s amazingly agile.

Be nice if someone did a Whitley!

Well, if you have the cash to upgrade 9and I don’t!:() then go for it!

I bought European Air War a while ago and, despite being within the requirements, my PC wouldn’t run it! Piece of crap!! 😡

Neither, for that matter, would Battle of Britain, and I ended up going back to the shop FIVE TIMES with it before giving up!! 🙁

I take it you mean Combat Flight Simulator? I actually quite like it – it’s simple, runs well (usually) and I get a lot of fun out of it. What I haven’t been able to do is a multi-player on it – my mate Sean (or Slapnuts, to give him his proper title) was itching to take me on at a dogfight (even though he’d be fodder!) but we could never get it to work 🙁

Hi Daz

Shame about the consoles! Guess i’ll just have to fix my pc up 🙂

I still run A10 Cuba on my machine – I have a thing about bombers as you might have guessed….
So far, the best flight sim Ihave ever played – a mixture of authenticity and sheer fun is European Air War – what a great game!

I hear that Sturmovik is even better!

One of the things that really appeals to me is getting involved with some of the multiplayer PC games – they look like great fun and surely geting involved in a dogfight online with a human opponent must be as close to the real thing as most of us will ever get. Hopefully one day soon!

Isn’t it a pity that MCFS is so dire ; )

Whitley

You’re most likely to come across a sort of Top Gun-clone flight-sim. I haven’t played many, but as I’m a WW2 fanatic, this is probably why! Besides, I find trying to out-turn the other chap in order to blast his head off to be better sport than firing a missile at him! 😀

If you can find it, I recommend Iron Aces 2, although having said that it is pretty obscure, so you might have to REALLY look for it in the shops. (or do as I did and find it by accident! :D) Failing that, try getting it from the net.

Other than that, I don’t know of any other flight-sims (and none of the Top Gun-clones even springs to mind – that probably tells you something!).

The old PSX had a pretty good arcade-type flight-sim – WingOver. Basically, you fought against other teams of aircraft and, if you won enough points, you could upgrade to a better aircraft, fit better weapons, engines, armour etc. Probably virtually impossible to find by now, though.

One flight-sim with a difference, however, was Airfix Dogfighter on the PC. It runs fine on mine (almost 3yrs old, and no upgrades). If you can find it, it’s well worth a look.

I love flight sims but my old PC is on its last legs these days. Can you get good flight sims for consoles? Still itching to try out Sturmovik, but there is no way my old computer could handle it (it has the PC equivalent of Alzheimer’s)

Well, each to their own, DB! 😉

I must say I’m rather looking forward to this one. PC games are a nightmare ‘cos if you don’t have an up-to-date PC, you’ve got no hope of running the game properly without some serious upgrading (and I don’t have the kind of cash to upgrade mine to “serious” specs! :()

Have to say I’ll forsake an accurate paint scheme for a good bit of gameplay, although the Iron Aces Spitfire, in its 54 Sqdn KL-B (Al Deere?) scheme looks the mutt’s! 😉

(another Secret Weapons… screenshot)

When did they have red tails:confused: ? Not sure about torpedoes either! 😉

Another preview…

http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/zones/previews/aug03/secretweapons.html

Must. Buy. This. Game. 😉