Ive just tried Raven Shield and I was quite disapointed. The graphics and art work are actually a step backward from RS and Black Thorn. Even the setup menu was lower quality. The area you fight in is smaller, which means the game goes alot faster. I was just testing out the teams on the first level and was quite astonished when the mission completed screen suddenly came up. The layout of the fighting areas is not very good and the AI of the tangos is bad which means your not going to encounter much of any unexpected firefights. Some other interesting points are that doors only open one way, which is admitedly more realistic but very difficult to open if you standing on the side which the door swings open. One thing that really surprised me is that they took away the ability to hold postition for team members, which means they constantly follow you around like a puppydog getting shot or giving away your position in sensitive situations. Even the Gameboy Advance allows you to park team members, this is one of the biggest faults of Ghost Recon also. Another surprising thing is you cant jump. The one thing I did like about this game is that you use the action/use button to grab a ladder before you climb/ascend. This is something that has always bothered me in other combat FPSs is I have trouble connecting with ladders especialy when you have to go down a ladder in a hole in the floor, and end up waddeling around like a lunatic to try to get in. Another new item is that all assault rifles come with the option of using a 100rnd dual drum magazine which eliminates running out of ammo in close-in firefights. My overall advice is to avoid this game and get the original Rouge Spear or Black Thorn as this is a step backward in almost all respects.

Thanks for the helpEGNM. One more question, theres a key on most keyboards between the contol and alt key with the MS logo on it. And with the XP OS, if you accidently press that button while playing a game your sent back to the desktop. Is there any way to disable that key?

“and loads of expansion packs and stuff downloaded from the net”
geedee- Where do you get this stuff? http://www.avsim.com and http://www.flightsim.com were suggested to me on my combat pc game thread, but I cant find much of anything on either site.

What do you think of SOF2? Im ashamed to admit I had to make extensive use cheats and walkthroughs to get through that as it would have taken me forever to figure it out on my own.

Can anyone tell me if you can take screen shots with Flight Simulater 2002?

Top 3 are:
Il-2 Sturmovic (havent tried FB)
(Rowans)Battle of Britain
OpFlashpoint(cobra attack helo)

Il-2 is so close to perfect, its little faults really nag me: the shape and size of Me-109 props, the gumby shaped pilot when he bails out, the sounds of jets and divebombers(which I guess they fixed in FB), black dot shaped enemy at a distance.

Battle of Britian is billed as a stratigac game, but its not, its just an excelent flight sim covering the best fighter campaign ever, between the spitfire vs Me-109. Just ignore all the stratigac setup mumbo jumbo and enjoy dogfights in your fighter with hundreds of germans in the air against hundreds of british. The modeled physics and AI are top notch (As good as Il-2), and if they ever upgrade the graphics to Il-2 level, this will be an all time classic, although planes viewed at a distace are even better and more realistic than Il-2.

The people who did OpFP really should turn the Cobra attack helo flying part of that game into a full flight sim. The stick/rudder is controled by the mouse and cyclic stick by pageup/down buttons, so your really flying it rather that just giveing it directions with the W,A,S,D buttons. That means if you yank back real hard on the stick at 150kts, youll crash out of contol. The graphics of the helo itself are good and overall this game makes a game like Comanche4 look like cheap garbage.

Crimson Skys could be good if they ever upgrade the graphics from its current max of 800×600. I got stuck playing SOF2 last night and used the noclip cheat to fly around the hong kong market to find a way out, and I enjoyed it.

Just want to say this is one of the best flight sims around. The game is about 3 years old now so the graphics arent at the same crisp level as Il-2, but its still very well done graphics. Its supposed to be a stratagy game but its really not as you can only assign bombing targets for the german side and allocate fighters and readiness level for the english. Once the planes are in the air you cant do anything to control either side. What makes this sim great though is the dogfighting as the AI is really good and the physics for the time space relationships are second to none. The flying characteristics of the planes are really good also (can anyone stand CFS2 on high flight realism settings?). My favorite is to use the unlimitted ammo and fuel cheats and strafe german bombers all the way back to their airfields and continue to strafe them as they land at their airfields. And really, isnt early Me-109 vs early spitfire about as classic a dogfight senario in all of aviation combat history?

Im really looking forward to seeing this game myself as the original Il-2 was very close to being a perfect flight sim. Yaks and La-5s vs Me-109s and Fw-190s, is this heaven? Very realistic handling characterics of the planes, graphics of the planes are almost perfect and the AI flying ability of the enemy pilots is great. I wish they had made all the planes flyable as I really wanted to fly a Me-262. You go against 8 yaks on ace setting with only your me-109 and you better have alot of altitude to shake them. I now understand that the statistic that in 3 out of for kills in aerial combat, the guy who went down never saw what hit him has to be true. Alot of time and distance is taken to set up and press an attack in aerial combat.

BTW, how senior are you Moggy? Senior enough to have seen WW2?

I have a quick unrelated question and thought Id stick it in here, can you take screen shots in FS2002?

Can someone tell me what to look out for when buying on ebay. I havent found any web pages on the internet telling you how to use ebay, strange, as it does seem complicated. Is it true that customer feedback ratings are important to check when buying from someone?