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Best heavy bomber sim ever made, if you're patient enough

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As the title says, if you have the patience, you will get plenty of mileage out of this game. You get to take over nearly every aspect of flying the famed B-17 Flying Fortress in strategic bombing missions over Europe. You can let your 'Fort pretty much run itself, or you can manually take control of any of its 10 crewmbers, from the Bombardier, to the Pilot, to the Tail Gunner. Whenever you're not in manual control, the plane "flies itself" although your input can greatly affect the outcome of the mission. As the campaign progresses, your crew gains experience and they are more able to do their respective jobs. The famous Norden bombsight is included in the game, designed with the help of an actual World War II bombardier who used the Norden to bomb Japan. It's as close to the real thing as you can get with a computer, and you'll feel like a champ once you figure out how to use it properly and are able to drop your 6,000 lb bomb load exactly where you want it to be from 25,000 feet up in the air. It's quite a feeling to watch your bombs drop one by one out of the bomb bay and hit the target. First you see the massive train of explosions wreaking havoc to your chosen target, followed 10 seconds later by the deafening roar. The flak is done to perfection as well. It's a bit terrifying to fly through heavy flak and watch your plane getting shot to shreds and not be able to do anything about it. It's like flying through a bunch of grenades, and when you're inside the plane you can hear the shrapnel plinking off of the airframe. You can name your crewmembers after anyone you like, you can even design your own nose art with the help of a mod. If you're really ambitious, you can be a Squadron Commander and be in total command of 12 bombers, and are able to name all 12 of them along with their 120 crewmembers. You can request reconnaisance film and intelligence information on any of the hundreds of in-game targets, and then choose which ones to target on the next mission. I've learned more about the geography of Europe from playing this game than from all the history classes I've had in my life. I could go on and on about the great times I've had on this game, but I wouldn't be fair to anyone who reads this if I don't mention the #1 pitfall of this game: the crashes. Depending on your operating system and hardware, you could have a hard time running this game without it crashing. I fought it for a month before I realized that the game didn't like my integrated sound card, and once I replaced it with a PCI card, everything was fine. Some people run the game without any difficulties whatsoever. For the $20 or so that it costs these days, if you're interested at all in flight sims or the B-17, and are willing to learn the massive amount of controls, then by all means buy this game. It's one of those games that you can play incessantly for a few months, put it down for a year or so, and then fall in love with all over again for a few more months. I don't see this game coming off of my shelf for a long long time.

B-17 Flying Fortress

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: June 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a good PC game because in shows people what it was like to Be in the clasic B-17.I only played the game once so I did not get a good sence of the game but I liked it all the same.

Problems with the Windows XP Professional

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game a few months ago. I didn't have any problems loading and playing it with the Windows NT platform. I was very dissapointed that I wasn't able to play with the XP. Any suggestions?
luis.gomez@us.army.mil

Very realistic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: February 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is probably the most realistic flight sim I've ever played. It looks like every switch, dial, and control that was on the real B-17 is accurately reproduced in this game, and all of them are fully functional with the click of a mouse button. Once you've played this game, you will know the real pre-flight procedure in a real B-17, you will know how to feather an engine in a real B-17, and you will know how to operate a Norden bombsight. Because of this, though, the learning curve is very steep. Don't expect to be flying your first mission for a while.

The graphics are pretty darn good, even though the game is 2 years old now. Personally I think the system requirements are vastly underestimated on the box. I have a Duron 1.2 GHz with a GeForce 4 (although only 128Mb of system ram) and it just runs tolerably at 800x600 with the detail levels up. The box claims it will run on a 300 MHz P2...I have a hard time believing that. Maybe in 512x384 with all the detail levels turned down, at like 25 frames per second. :) It's no wonder so many people have had problems with the game with such misleadingly low system requirements...

In conclusion I would definately recommend this game to anyone who is a WW2 aviation buff or anyone who is tired of the hackneyed fighter-based aviation combat sims and wants something a little more immersive and dramatic.

just okay

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have most of the major flight sims and now I have this and have only worked with it a bit but I find it a little too overcomplicated, it's taxing even for someone who is a flight simmer and is already flight tested and combat tested.
The graphics are good but first there was the necessity to download a patch which at 25mb is the largest game patch I've ever seen, the list of fixes is enough to make you question why they released it in that form anyway.

Although the amount of interactivity is less with the bombers in Janes Attack Squadron so is the level of overhead.

If you are really a B17 nut though and you want total realistic immersion in that plane then you'll like the sim.

Lots of practice and patience

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent game, but not one that you can really jump right into. It takes a lot of playing to get used to the (MANY) controls and commands. Microprose was quite thourough and everything is pretty darn authentic. If you've got the time and patience this game is very rewarding.......one downside, no joystick calibration? or force feedback....otherwise excellent!

Excellent But....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Things seem a bit repetitive after a while, plus I found it near impossible to hit anything in the turret gunner mode, but other than that its great

the graphics are wonderfully detailed (read: need a GOOD computer), it offers some challenge, and alot of flexibility

if they would add some dedicated fighter missions then it would be spectacular(I know this detracts from what its called but they added the ability to fly the fighters they should have added a few campaigns) get it if your a WW2 fan, other than that stray away...

Better than I expected

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I had another B-17 game some years ago. This one is significantly different. This is a real challenge! First, the instrumentation and interior graphics are very good. They could be improved by allowing the flyer to operate the flight deck controls with the mouse, but that is nitpicking. The exterior graphics are not state-of-the-art, but they are plenty good enough to really experience the game. The sound is good and realistic.

I had better identify my equipment so that you can judge my viewpoint. I have a 1.8 MHz Pentium 4 with a half-gig of RAM and my OS is Microsoft Windows ME. Video is ATI. I use a CH Flightstick Pro USB and CH Pro Pedals USB with Control Manager. (The brakes do not work with this simulation.

Everything else works fine and the loading was easy.

As to my experience, I'm in my mid-seventies and made my first solo in the mid '40s. I've flown a variety of single engine aircraft over the years, but have little multi-engine experience, and that only as air crew, except on the computer. I've also built and flown a variety of radio-controlled aircraft. I have flown just about every decent simulator on the market since 1989, but my specialty is WWII aircraft since that is my generation. I'm partial to the Pacific Theater, and particularly love the F6F "Hellcat" as a fighter plane--it accounted for nearly 80 percent of all the Japanese aircraft shot down in air-to-air combat in the Pacific, and had a 19-1 kill ratio. Not bad. It also made more aces than any other allied single-engine fighter plane.

I mostly fly fighters. I think the best combat flight sim (for graphics and flight characteristics) currently on the market is IL-2 Sturmovik. Jane's WWII Fighters and and Microsoft's Combat Flight Sim 2 are neck-and-neck for second place, and I'm looking at MS Combat Flight Sim 3 with high hopes.

This is a good sim. It is very realistic in the flight characteristics of a large multi-engine prop driven aircraft. The sounds are very realistic as well, and for those who think it is a difficult game--it is! But then, so is actually flying such an aircraft, but it can be learned. Practice, practice, practice!

The ability to move from one crew position to the next easily is not realistic, but it is great fun! One thing I appreciate is the very thing that bugs many; the fact that you can spend hours on a single mission--in fact, you can spend several minutes stacked up, orbiting your own airfield just waiting to land after a mission. Oh, you can avoid it by speeding things up to 8X time, but of course the actual aircrews were simply stuck with it. That's just the way it was!

In real life, it was hours, weeks, sometimes months of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. "Hurry up and wait" was as typical of WWII as "Kilroy was here."

But, do you want to get a feel for how it really was (without the gut-wrenching fear, of course) or do you just want to play another game? One thing about the boredom of hours of droning engines--it lulled the crew, so that when the action suddenly started when a Bf-109 or FW-190 or (God help us!) an ME-162 suddenly bounced you out of the sun, it was all the more unexpected.

This is of course not like being at war. Not even close. The people who really flew in these ships actually died, as you know. More than 50,000 men from the 8th died over Europe. That's the entire crew of 5,000 different aircraft. Losses were high. It was hard to get through the 25 missions required, alive. For the Luftwaffe, it was, if anything, worse! There was no limit to the number of their missions. They flew until they were killed or the war ended, whichever came first.

I recommend this game if you have the patience and the equipment tofly it properly. If you are simply looking for something that will allow you to shoot down lots of "enemy" quickly, this is probably not for you.

Joe Pierre, USN (Ret)

B-17 is a great game!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: September 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

B-17 Flying Fortress is a good game for several reasons. It has great historical accuracy. It has real targets that were of importance to the 8th airforce at that time. Some of the game modes are:1) Bomber campaign. In this, you command a B-17, and 10 men who flew it. It has a file containing everything about every crew member. 2) Squaderon campaign. In this you command a squaderon of B-17s. You pick targets,pick the planes that go on the mission,pick ordanance, change waypoints, and assign recon missions. There are all the targets on the map in Germany and France, and you pick 3. They are Primary, secondary, and tertiary. Everything about each individual plane is the same. 3) Historical mission. Fly 6 historical missions in WWII. 4)Quickstart missions. Fly 6 missions ranging from landing a crippled B-17, to shooting down P-51s in an Fw-190. 5) Training missions. Fly 6 training missions including Taxi and takeoff, approach and landing,feathering/restarting an engine,bombing:good conditions, bombing:poor conditions, and gunnery training. As far as technical information, it is exact! The cockpits are exact, I know because I have a book with photos of all the cockpits of all the planes you can fly, plus I've been in a B-17. You can fly the following: B-17, P-51, P-47, P-38, Me 109, Fw 190 and the Me 262 jet. The rest of the B-17 is accurate too. The game also goes into detail with the Norden bombsight. The graphics are impressive! Overall this game is great, and I highly recommend it! It's worth the investment.

b-17

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

My always crashes on my Windows-XP Proffesinal. If you buy one and get it to work, it ranks in the top 5 funest flying/fighting games ever. If you have an old computer with Windows-95/98 DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! But, if you have a new PC with Windows-ME and a lot of memory it should work fine. I don't think it works on Mac.

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