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Originally Posted by philip.ed
Just thought I should add that there are options. BoB2 has better AI, better comms, and a much better campaign system and single missions which are leaps and bounds over CloD. So with this in mind, you advocate that this should have all been available at release? Interesting.
Please could this post not be removed, as I feel it is useful for anyone who has never played BoB2. In terms of gameplay, it's the best Battle of Britain game on the market at the moment.
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I feel it is important too.. but you have to consider both sides of the coin to be fair
BoB II like BoB I is not what I and many others would consider a bench mark flight sim..
In 2005 Shockwave took Rowan's 2001 BoB I code and basically upgraded the graphics engine and
REMOVED what little online play it had! But don't take my word for it! i.e.
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eurogamer Review of BoB II
'Potentially excellent' is not a phrase we thought we'd be using in this review; it's not a phrase we hoped we'd be using in this review. Because Wings of Victory is basically a beautified re-release of a much-loved five-year-old air combat classic (Rowan's Battle of Britain) excellence should really have come as standard. Instead Shockwave, in the process of adding attractive new aircraft models, cockpits, scenery and particle effects appear to have introduced a swarm of new bugs too.
If these bugs were small - a misaligned texture here, a briefing typo there - then we'd happily forgive and forget. Sadly they are actually rather large - lock-ups, crashes, mysteriously low frame-rates
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A sky full of droning Dorniers is a truly awesome sight and something you won't have seen the like of in other sims. Unfortunately it also seems to be a cue for some of those crashes and frame-rate slumps we mentioned earlier.
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Watching frame-rates nosedive or seeing your icon-strewn desktop pop-up as you plunge, guns blazing into a swarm of Luftwaffe bombers doesn't do a whole lot for immersion
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In a debatable step Shockwave has chosen to remove the unreliable multiplayer mode that featured in the original title rather than repair it
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And
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GAME HUB Review of BoB II
In 2005 Shockwave Productions, having obtained the rights to the BOB code, released BOB II, Wings of Victory.
Like a new pilot taking off without setting his prop pitch though, it stalled on take-off. Arguably, it took four patches and nearly a year before it was stable and playable for the majority of gamers, due to similar stability issues which had plagued the original release.
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There is no online mode, which many players regard as a core element of any modern combat game. And there is virtually no way for users to create and share their own missions
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Those are just some of the reasons why I and many others don't consder BoB I or BoB II a bench mark flight sim
As for the offline play and AI..
All I can say is
IT BETTER BE GOOD! in light of the fact that there is
NO ONLINE play!
It's too bad Shockwave had this late 1990s mentality in 2005. Granted in the 90s online was in it infancy (read exception to the rule unless a pay-to-play sim) but that mind set had long gone the way of the dinosaur by 2005! Where the emphases switched from AI and offline campaigns to smooth online multiplayer coops and campaigns.
I know I know I know..
You want both!
And in a perfect world where nobody grows old, money grows on trees, people work for free and the market has no influence on the products you produce.. we could have both.. but here in the real world there is only so much time and money and the market
demands online play over offline campaigns. Which explains why CoD and so many other flight sims have pushed offline play to the back burner.