Most Accurate WWII Battle Video Game?

[scotrace]

I'm not finding a previous thread on this (though I know I've seen it...). Of the currently available video games (PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, etc.) that put you in the action in WWII, which is best?

Battlefield 1942? Call of Duty?

????

 

[Atomic Glee]

I'm not finding a previous thread on this (though I know I've seen it...). Of the currently available video games (PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, etc.) that put you in the action in WWII, which is best?

Battlefield 1942? Call of Duty?

????

I've always been a big fan of Call of Duty. Battlefield 1942 sacrifices some realism for more action, and it's primarily designed for massive multiplayer matches - if you're not into that, the single player game is decent, but not nearly as involving as the Call of Duty or Medal of Honor series. CoD gets my vote - the original was fantastic, and I'm looking forward to playing the sequel soon (I'm a Mac guy, and the OS X port of CoD2 just came out).

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

The most realistic sim would likely be the Liberation 1941-45 mod for Operation Flashpoint. Other games have better graphics, sound, etc. But in terms of recreating actual squad combat over large areas Operation Flashpoint really cannot be beat.

 

[Salv]

IMO the very best WW2 console shooters are the two (so far) Brothers In Arms titles: Road To Hill 30 and Earned In Blood, which I've got on my XBox. You get to actually control other soldiers, directing them to take cover, lay down covering fire or attack the enemy as you see fit. The enemy AI is excellent - only bettered by the enemy AI in the PC/Mac Call Of Duty 2 - and the graphics are superb with very lifelike characters. The soundtrack is also excellent, with lots of shouting between squad-mates and some occasionally very funny dialogue ("I'm only shooting kneecaps today!"). Also pretty good is Commandos: Strikeforce where you play as one of three different characters depending on the level - Green Beret, Sniper and Spy.

Call Of Duty 2: The Big Red One is good on the XBox, but the CoD titles on computer are better IMO than the console versions - better graphics, better plotlines - and if you're looking for a computer - rather than a console game - game I'd recommend those first. The various Medal Of Honor titles are very good, but CoD is far better. CoD2 for the Mac was released last month, and it finally arrived in the UK earlier this month. I got a copy last week and finished it fairly quickly on regular difficulty, so I've started again on the next level of difficulty. There's a level where the Americans have to take Hill 400 which is one of the most intense levels I've played. There are enemy soldiers everywhere and it's exhausting to play. I played it on a 1.33MHz 12" PowerBook with 768MB of RAM and it was playable though there was some definite lag on the busier levels, but not enough to make it unplayable. (There's a level in one of the MoH expansion packs which was impossible to play on an old iMac that just exceeded the minimum system requirements.)

Battlefield 1942 is very poor as a single player game, but if you're into online multi-player gaming it may be worth looking at.

 

[Marv]

Call of Duty hands down both the original and CoD2....fantastic games especially for the PC.

 

[Atomic Glee]

Call Of Duty 2: The Big Red One is good on the XBox, but the CoD titles on computer are better IMO than the console versions - better graphics, better plotlines - and if you're looking for a computer - rather than a console game - game I'd recommend those first. The various Medal Of Honor titles are very good, but CoD is far better. CoD2 for the Mac was released last month, and it finally arrived in the UK earlier this month. I got a copy last week and finished it fairly quickly on regular difficulty, so I've started again on the next level of difficulty. There's a level where the Americans have to take Hill 400 which is one of the most intense levels I've played. There are enemy soldiers everywhere and it's exhausting to play. I played it on a 1.33MHz 12" PowerBook with 768MB of RAM and it was playable though there was some definite lag on the busier levels, but not enough to make it unplayable. (There's a level in one of the MoH expansion packs which was impossible to play on an old iMac that just exceeded the minimum system requirements.)

Sounds like CoD2 runs quite well then. I just treated myself to a 15" MacBook Pro to replace my old iBook and eMac, so I'm really looking forward to CoD2 on it.

 

[Salv]

Sounds like CoD2 runs quite well then. I just treated myself to a 15" MacBook Pro to replace my old iBook and eMac, so I'm really looking forward to CoD2 on it.

Should play like a dream on a MacBook Pro.

 

[scotrace]

VERY zippy

I'm amazed at how fast that machine is overall.

 

[Twitch]

Go to www.combatsim.com and read all the pertinent reviews and updates of these and other titles. While I did not review those I have many others plus writen historical articles there. Stay with the PC format though. There are zillions of good games and combat simulations for PCs. There aren't any titles worth a hoot for Mac. If you're an adult like me stand-alone systems are an unwarranted expense plus they sit on the floor somewhere near one of your TVs and gather dust and are in the way.

 

[Salv]

There aren't any titles worth a hoot for Mac.

Except the CoD and MoH titles of course.

If you're an adult like me stand-alone systems are an unwarranted expense plus they sit on the floor somewhere near one of your TVs and gather dust and are in the way.

Or if you're an adult like me you pack it away into a carrying case when it's not in use.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

.

I really liked Medal of Honor: Allied Assault back in the day. I think it came out around 2000 or so.

BF42 is not realistic at all, but is tremendous fun to play with friends online, as is Battlefield 2, which is based modern combat.

 

[Aristaeus]

For PC here are two of my favorites.



IL2 1946

IL-2 1946, adds 36 new planes, four new gigantic maps, over a hundred new ground objects, and nearly 200 new campaign missions. This new opus also includes all of the previous Il-2 series content.

What years ago began as a one-aircraft study sim is now an astonishing anthology, with a whopping 229 flyable aircraft and over 300 aircraft total! Not to mention that players will have the opportunity to get a first glance at the future of the series arriving next year: Storm of War™ Battle of Britain via exclusive bonus videos. Key Features New Aircraft: – 32 new flyable fighters and bombers, and four new AI aircraft! Over the Russian Front, the player will gain access to six new versions of the Petlyakov Pe-2, the most famous Soviet level and dive bomber of the war. In the Far East and the Pacific, players will finally fly the long-awaited one true heir to the series namesake, the Il-10 Sturmovik. Other new planes range from the Ki-27 Nate, the plane that fought against the Flying Tigers in 1941, to the N1K2 George and J2M5 Jack, the two most advanced Japanese fighters of WWII. And finally, the player will fly over a dozen new jet and rocket aircraft such as the MiG-9 jet fighter, the predecessor to the famous MiG-15 that gained world-wide fame in the Korean War; the Ta-183, a jet fighter designed by Kurt Tank, the creator of the famous FW-190, and the Arado Ar-234 Blitz, the world’s first operation jet bomber.

New Maps: Large new historical maps of the Kiev region; a map of Manchuria focusing on a border region between USSR, China and Japanese-occupied Korea; a large bonus Burma map; and an online Khalkin Gol / Nomonhan map. New Campaigns: Nine new campaigns with nearly 200 missions add incredible realism and attention to detail. There are detailed careers for fighter and bomber pilots, for the German, Soviet, and Japanese air forces, offering such varied objectives as flying jet bombers over occupied Europe, to intercepting American B-29 Super fortresses over Iwo Jima and Japanese home islands! As opposed to dynamically generated campaigns that shipped with our previous offerings, the new missions are all hand-made, giving the player much more detailed environments, and much more exciting missions.

Alternate History: Three of the nine campaigns are a departure into alternate history, focusing on hypothetical battles between the Soviet Union and Germany in the year 1946, while WWII still rages on. Both the VVS and Luftwaffe now have access to advanced jet and rocket fighters, and other revolutionary technology. All of these new planes are modeled with the same incredible degree of historical accuracy and attention to detail as all the other planes in Il-2. New Features: With the alternate history campaigns, the player will gain access to such exotic equipment as Soviet mixed-power fighters, using both piston and rocket engines; fly incredible jet aircraft capable of sub-sonic speeds; and launch wire-guided air-to-air rockets at enemy bomber formations. 1946 also adds an incredible variety of new ground targets, including, for the first time in the series, trenches and bunkers that give a whole new dimension to the ground attack aspect of the sim.

Nearly 1,000 new Paint schemes: The new planes, as well as many of the other ones in the series, come with a host of historical paint schemes, showing many of the individual aircraft or squadrons that served in WWII. Detailed Plane Guide: A detailed document, totaling over 450 pages of information, gives the low-down on every single one of our 229 flyable aircraft, allowing new players much easier access to the incredible variety of aircraft in the sim.

[video=youtube;oR5cKcHS9Rc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR5cKcHS9Rc[/video]



CFS2

Combat Flight Simulator 2 is an improvement over its predecessor in almost every respect, and it particularly shows that the development team was committed to improving the aspects of the original game that were lacking. The most notable of these is the graphics. Both the aircraft and the terrain models have been significantly upgraded, and the result is a very good-looking simulation. Considering the limited variety of terrain in the Pacific - sand, jungle, and water - the terrain graphics ran the risk of being monotonous. But Combat Flight Simulator 2 does an excellent job of making these three recurring types of terrain look realistic and attractive. The overall effect does much to make you actually feel as if you're in the Pacific theater - you'll occasionally spot an island in the middle of the huge expanse of ocean, which conveys the feeling of tremendous space and distance. The good weather effects further enhance the scenery, and the game even supports transform-and-lighting effects with compatible video cards, which improve the graphics even further.

The aircraft models are particularly good in Combat Flight Simulator 2, and they stand in stark contrast to the shiny planes of the original, which looked like flying toys. The aircraft in the sequel look much more like real combat planes, thanks to a combination of detail and improved textures. Furthermore, while the intact aircraft models are impressive enough, the damaged ones are even more so. Unlike in its predecessor, damage in Combat Flight Simulator 2 is accurately reflected in the aircraft models, to the extent that you can even see a plane's infrastructure exposed when you shoot off pieces of the plane such as the tail or a wing. This visible damage corresponds well to changes in the flight models, and effects like smoke not only represent physical damage but also convey the different levels of aircraft damage. That is, if you see streaming black smoke coming from your enemy, you can write him off. But sputtering or intermittent smoke means he's still dangerous. Similarly, if you see black smoke coming from your own plane, get home or get out.

The improvement in the graphics goes beyond the terrain and the aircraft models. The cockpits are tremendously improved since the previous installment, and this is one area where the deficiencies of the original Combat Flight Simulator have been fully addressed. The 3D cockpits in the original game were a real weak point, so much that they were almost useless. However, the cockpits in Combat Flight Simulator 2 are superb in 2D, and the 3D cockpits are also much better than before. The only area in which the graphics fall a bit short is in the campaign screens: The 1940s-comic-book look, while not ugly, is a bit plain and doesn't do enough to create a feeling of participation or immersion. Fortunately, the game seems more authentic when you're actually flying, where the radio chatter is just persistent enough to add to the atmosphere without being distracting.

The flight modeling in Combat Flight Simulator 2 is very good, and at the highest difficulty settings, it will satisfy most experienced pilots. While not as unforgiving, and presumably not as realistic, as the flight model found in some of the more hard-core online-only sims, Combat Flight Simulator 2 does an excellent job of accentuating the differences between aircraft. Factors like the Wildcat's diving advantage and the Zero's superior turn radius and climbing capability are modeled well. These aircraft also depart controlled flight more readily than their counterparts in the first game, which makes skillful flying a tricky business. At lower difficulty settings, Combat Flight Simulator 2 flies a lot like Microsoft's hybrid action-simulation, Crimson Skies, which will allow inexperienced players to get used to air combat without the frustration of constantly going into uncontrolled spins.

[video=youtube;9VWkANRLvn4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VWkANRLvn4[/video]

 

[Heather]

Oh my gosh, I loved Call of Duty! I think its the only video game that I ever actually finished! Thats a rare feat for me! I just enjoyed it that much.

 

[Spitfire]

I have always wondered why there isn't a strategic Battle of Britain game. The whole Operation Room concept is just screaming for being transfered into a videogame.
And if they just added the possibility for the player to jump into a Spitfire or Hurricane once in a while too, I wouldn't need any other game.

 

[Cobden]

There is a game just like that; IIRC it's called Battle of Britain 2

 

[Aristaeus]

IL2 1946

[video=youtube;X_3nnjl5YTM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_3nnjl5YTM[/video]

 

[Edward]

Jinkies! I haven't bothered with video games for the guts of twenty years or more now. Never owned a standalone console... amazed by how far they have advanced in that time. Into 2011 I'm thinking of an XBox, though I may well be spending more time with zombies than WW2....

 

[Spitfire]

There is a game just like that; IIRC it's called Battle of Britain 2

Is it any good?
Does it work with Vista?

 

[Cobden]

I think so, I had a vista comp at the time IIRC...I do certainly remember it had an ops room strategic element to it

 

[Davep]

Brothers in Arms - Best FPS series; streets and town of real events are recreated as you let a squad through the same places as they fought.
Company of Heroes - Best RTS series
R.U.S.E - New RTS series, just came out, very well done