Wings Over Europe
Wings Over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot lets you pilot any of the 12 most legendary Cold War fighters! Realistic air combat is waiting for you, in some of the most intense dogfights of the Cold War era. Flyable aircraft include the: F-100 Super Sabre, F-105 Thunderchief, F-4 Phantom II, F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt II, British Hunter, and the exciting vertical take-off and landing of the Harrier “jump jet.” Next generation environmental effects including volumetric clouds and state-of-the-art dynamic lighting Highly-accurate planes, weapons, flight models, and challenging enemy AI Win decorations, awards, and promotions with each successful mission.
Features:
– Engage in blood-draining, G-pulling, action-packed dogfights against 13 different types of Cold War Soviet aircraft.
– Fly era-specific aircraft through Central Europe in three epic campaigns.
– From the developers of the highly successful European Air War, Strike Fighters: Project 1, and Wings Over Vietnam.
– Random mission generator provides maximum flexibility and replayability. Campaign missions also have a different outcome each time.
– Open architecture for mod support. Download thousands of user-created skins, aircraft, terrain, missions, campaigns, and editors already available on the Internet.
– Next generation environmental effects including volumetric clouds and state-of-the-art dynamic lighting.
– Highly-accurate planes, weapons, flight models, and challenging enemy AI.
– Win decorations, awards, and promotions with each successful mission.
Steam User 129
Update: If you do decide to get this after reading this review, you can download a patch that will fix many things in this still great sim. Download it here:
Something more is that there is some pretty awesome third party addon content for this simulation that is faithful to sim itself and the flight eras it offers. Check the great site:
As a flight sim hobbyist but not a dedicated, I've had a long history with flight sims such as Chuck Yeager's Flight Trainer and Air Combat Sim, MS Flight Simulator (from the very early days). Aces Over Europe and Red Baron (both Dynamix) and Knights Of The Sky (Microprose) who included greats like Billy Bishop (a Canadian Ace from WWI) and Ike Immelman (a tactical aviation innovator whom has a manoeuvre with his namesake). Spectrum Holobyte's Falcon 3.0 which utilized the new advancement of the FPU unit of the Intel 386 to offer real military quality flight simulation (apparently Spectrum Holobyte adapted their actual military flight simulator technology for use in the game).
One of my favourite flight sims was F117 Stealth Fighter by Microprose on the basis of its customizable mission dynamics and flight strategy with stealth technology, you were guaranteed replayability. Which is what brings me to Wings Over Europe.
Wings Over Europe has all of the elements of the classic flight simulator games offered by Microprose and one of my heroes of Microprose, "Wild" Bill Cody who was like a the Tom Clancy of flight simulation in his day. It has all of these elements without overdoing it and keeping it simple enough for the newcomer to flight simulation to accomplish and advance.
Most of the missions take place during the Cold War, so you won't be flying any stealth fighters such as the YF-22 or F-35. You will however get a fun and unmatched flight experience of the cold war era and a lesson in the advance of jet and missile technology during the era. Missions are tense though sometimes you might not have an encounter during a mission in campaign mode if you are careful enough. This is what brings the realism to it. The enemy AI is great and they communicate, so once you're spotted, that's it. They're firing AAA or SAMs and scrambling their hardware to dispatch you.
I'm running Windows 7 (32-bit) and though I've found that it runs great, it tends to drop out of the game after missions but still retains your progress. I've run the same game on Windows Vista (several years ago) and played it through time and again without problem so I suspect that what I'm experiencing is a UAC problem (maybe running under admin will work).
You don't need a flight stick to fly the flight sim as the keyboard controls are good, but a flight stick would definately be a big advantage.
One of the greatest features is that the entire battlefield feels like it a living and breathing conflict and the enemy and allies are on standby all of the time. There are ground units whose eyes and ears can result in you being spotted resulting in a nearby airfield dispatching its own air CAP to deal with you.
Likewise you might fly missions where you are quickly scrambled while enemy squadrons attack your airfield.
All in all a very enjoyable experience despite the fact that it is an older title. The graphic and gameplay hold up for certain. Just try all of the different camera views and you'll see what I mean...
Highly recommended for any avid flight sim fan especially those of Microprose flight sims, and those who are new to flight simulation who want something that is scalable as they learn more about the controls and aircraft. Don't get me wrong, this has some advanced features like targeting different targeting (supporting A2A, A2G, A2R and Guns) and radar modes and ECM and a Radar Jammer (Electronic Counter Measures) as well.
This is the flight sim for fans of classic sims and those looking to get into sims.
If you want to get pumped about this and games like this, watch the movie The Right Stuff.
Brian Joseph Johns
Steam User 40
Flying is pretty fun. It is more arcadish than sim. So if you like planes and just want to mess around you will enjoy this game.
You have to maually patch this game to not have any crashes for windows 7 and probably 8 too.
Steam User 21
For the asking price during a sale, this is an exellent purchase. The game has dept and an amazing modding community that provides aircraft, campaigns and the like.
However, the sequels is far superior. You can buy them off the Developers website here:
Steam User 12
WOULD BUY AGAIN! AND APARRENTLY I DID...So I had bought this expansion long ago and did not realize it. Saw it on Steam thought it was something new from thirdwire, hit add to cart. Not gonna ask for a refund. Why you may ask...
Strikefighters has always been one of the best "Fun to fly" non arcade, non simulator games ever developed. Sad thing is, none of the rest of the series is available on steam. And I have them all including SF2, and all of it's variants and expansions.
What tops this series over SF2? This entry in the Strikefighters series is from the time when hundreds of mods were available for this game. Yes, hundreds of mods, and if you search thoroughly these mods are still available. From aircraft (some heli's can be found out there), to map packs to, complete missions and campaigns. In comparison to SF2 everything in SF2 is now DLC. Mods also worked online so long as the people you were playing with had the same mods. Much like Torchlight. You can also find the map & weapon editors from Strikefighters Project 1 and it works with all non SF2 variants, E.G.: SF: Project 1, SF: Wings Over Europe, SF: Wings Over Vietnam & SF: Isreal 6 Day War. Each aircraft and vehicle in SF has it's own flight/combat characteristics/weapon loadout limitations. So far I have accumulated 5.64gb's of mods with an average of 4mb per aircraft/vehicle & 20mb per complete campaigns & maps.
As another reviewer had also mentioned, yes sadly you have to get the updates from the developer site. And another reviewer mentioning to run the executable rather than the steamn link. SF was noted to have issues with newer OS's past XP, but with the needed patch it has cleared up seemingly all those issues. But once you get it to run perfectly, you will find yourself wasting plenty of flight hours destroying all you can see. I still hold this game #1 over all the newer flight games that are not complete sims.
Would not buy again...again...since I already have bought it again 10/10
Steam User 8
As far as I know, you're better off buying this directly from the developer than from Steam. But if you do get it here, on a sale or something, you'll get a great game, just in the right spot between arcade and flight simulator. The game runs Ok in Linux via Proton.
Do get the latest patch from the developer, for some reason the patch is not on Steam. Also try some of the mods, maps, planes and addons from combatace or similar websites, there's tons of planes compatible with WoE, from WWII to modern planes.
Steam User 5
PATCH IS ON DEVELOPER WEBSITE!! They do not get any money from this :(
AFTER PATCHIGN START FROM THE EXE NOT WITH THE STEAM CLIENT!!!!! Important or it will crash...
One of the best sims out there. It is not the most accurate in weapon management or flight model, but the gameplay is über. More than that, the game is totally moddable, you can basically play any combat plane of the last 70 years in any mission, especially if you combine the games together. You can fly any kind of mission under any nation, under any scenery. Just use the modpacks that are freely available!!
It is a very good entry to the series, because of the price and the huge number of mods that already available. The second series is the more up-to-date one though, but that is more expensive. That contains some optimizations, new features and better modding capabalities(mostly). But Wings over Europe is a very good start. A good set of basic planes, various missions, and let me repeat myself a tons of mods.
At this moment I can intercept Bears over the Bering Strait with my Canadian Arrow, or bomb the hell out out California with my Su-17, or wipe the floor with Lybia flying in a Panavia Tornado, with this very same game. So get it, and get to the developer website and get the series!!!!
However this version is not the official one, this is an outdated version which is owned by Strategy First. The developer has a series of fighters which can be combined together for maximum fun.
Steam User 3
Red Crown. Sinner Lead, heading to waypoint 7.
This game raised me as a kid