H
Hellshade
Guest
Hey All,
I just thought I'd give a few more thoughts about my opinions and experience so far with P3 and break it down into different categories. After that, I'll sum it up by answering what I call "The Big Question".
Presentation - Professional and Polished. The first thing you notice after loading up OFF P3 is that all of the menus are very professionally done and the whole appearance is that a lot of time was spent polishing up the front end experience. It definately presents itself as a serious flight simulator.
Visuals - Stunning - No matter if you just jump into a Quick Combat or join a Campaign, as soon as you are in your cockpit looking out over the war torn front and at your fellow pilots, the graphics strike you as just plain beautiful, especially if you have a higher end rig and can bump up the sliders to 4s. The high resolution scenery is just beautiful to fly over ang helps give life to a wonderful illusion of flight. All of the models look great!
Feel of WWI - Immersive - Between the actual video footage of WW I soldiers and pilots in combat, 3200 historically acurate rendered plane paint jobs by date and squadron (plus Aces!), the individual quirks and characteristics of the planes flight models and even right down to filing out a Claim report to hope you get credit for your hard won kills, it's obvious this was a labor of love project.
Combat - Intense - For just being a wooden crate with an engine and a gun mounted on the front, there is a ton of action going on in the pilot seat. You have to watch for other enemy fighters who try with incredible skill to get on your six for a kill shot. Look for squadron mates to see if they need help shaking off an attacker, because if they die, there might not be anyone to witness your Kill Claims. Deal with wind and changing weather fronts, AA fire, ground based machine gunner nests and still manage to try and get an enemy within your sights so you can put some lead into them, hopefully before you run out of fuel or ammo! If you happen to have a TrackIR (which I heartily recommend) you'll find yourself constantly scanning the skies during combat in a furious effort to stay out of their gun sights while putting someone else within yours...at very, very short ranges! Kill shots often seem to happen at less than 50 to 100 yards and it becomes a fine art of learning how close you get as you keep hammering away at a foe before you pull up to avoid a mid air collision. If all of the settings are set to realistic, you quickly begin to understand why the average pilot never lived past 2 weeks on duty.
Replayability - Huge - As a fresh young German pilot enlisting, I had 54 squadrons to choose from at 84 different dates / locations during the war. That's just the Germans. There are also complete campaigns for the British, French and Americans too!! Throw in the choice between fighter and bomber pilot, a whole slew of different planes to fly as the war progresses and a ton of options to make the game challenging for everyone from beginners to experienced Virtual Pilots and you can see there is more than enough to keep you coming back for more for many, many years to come.
So what's the Big Question? The Big Question (for any game) is "What do you get for your money?" For myself, I believe the answer is "endless hours of intense, riveting and completely immersive, thrilling combat in a beautifully rendered recreation of The Great War." To me, a great game is a game that gives me a feeling of challenge, progression, accomplishment and a whole host of powerful emotional responses to playing it. OFF P3 does all of this exceptionally well. Once you get into the campaign, your emotions can quickly switch between the anxious feeling of coming upon a numerically superior foe, to the thrill of downing an enemy and moments later a panic fear as bullets shred your engine or you stall out at low altitude and have to fight damage controls to try and pull out of an flat spin or uncontrolled dive. OFF P3 is all about the challenge of not just downing enemy aircraft, but of staying alive. It's about progressing to newer, more powerful aircraft that tilts the odds in the air to your favor...this time. It's about the accomplishment of slowly ratcheting up the realism level until you can eventually get a confirmed kill in The Great War under the harshest of conditions.
The best thing I can say about P3 though is that I used to be an MMO fantatic. WoW. Everquest 2. Age of Conan. Now I have a new life. I'm a pilot in WWI and victory has never tasted sweeter, because I don't know if I'll be alive tomorrow in order to savor it.
Hellshade
I just thought I'd give a few more thoughts about my opinions and experience so far with P3 and break it down into different categories. After that, I'll sum it up by answering what I call "The Big Question".
Presentation - Professional and Polished. The first thing you notice after loading up OFF P3 is that all of the menus are very professionally done and the whole appearance is that a lot of time was spent polishing up the front end experience. It definately presents itself as a serious flight simulator.
Visuals - Stunning - No matter if you just jump into a Quick Combat or join a Campaign, as soon as you are in your cockpit looking out over the war torn front and at your fellow pilots, the graphics strike you as just plain beautiful, especially if you have a higher end rig and can bump up the sliders to 4s. The high resolution scenery is just beautiful to fly over ang helps give life to a wonderful illusion of flight. All of the models look great!
Feel of WWI - Immersive - Between the actual video footage of WW I soldiers and pilots in combat, 3200 historically acurate rendered plane paint jobs by date and squadron (plus Aces!), the individual quirks and characteristics of the planes flight models and even right down to filing out a Claim report to hope you get credit for your hard won kills, it's obvious this was a labor of love project.
Combat - Intense - For just being a wooden crate with an engine and a gun mounted on the front, there is a ton of action going on in the pilot seat. You have to watch for other enemy fighters who try with incredible skill to get on your six for a kill shot. Look for squadron mates to see if they need help shaking off an attacker, because if they die, there might not be anyone to witness your Kill Claims. Deal with wind and changing weather fronts, AA fire, ground based machine gunner nests and still manage to try and get an enemy within your sights so you can put some lead into them, hopefully before you run out of fuel or ammo! If you happen to have a TrackIR (which I heartily recommend) you'll find yourself constantly scanning the skies during combat in a furious effort to stay out of their gun sights while putting someone else within yours...at very, very short ranges! Kill shots often seem to happen at less than 50 to 100 yards and it becomes a fine art of learning how close you get as you keep hammering away at a foe before you pull up to avoid a mid air collision. If all of the settings are set to realistic, you quickly begin to understand why the average pilot never lived past 2 weeks on duty.
Replayability - Huge - As a fresh young German pilot enlisting, I had 54 squadrons to choose from at 84 different dates / locations during the war. That's just the Germans. There are also complete campaigns for the British, French and Americans too!! Throw in the choice between fighter and bomber pilot, a whole slew of different planes to fly as the war progresses and a ton of options to make the game challenging for everyone from beginners to experienced Virtual Pilots and you can see there is more than enough to keep you coming back for more for many, many years to come.
So what's the Big Question? The Big Question (for any game) is "What do you get for your money?" For myself, I believe the answer is "endless hours of intense, riveting and completely immersive, thrilling combat in a beautifully rendered recreation of The Great War." To me, a great game is a game that gives me a feeling of challenge, progression, accomplishment and a whole host of powerful emotional responses to playing it. OFF P3 does all of this exceptionally well. Once you get into the campaign, your emotions can quickly switch between the anxious feeling of coming upon a numerically superior foe, to the thrill of downing an enemy and moments later a panic fear as bullets shred your engine or you stall out at low altitude and have to fight damage controls to try and pull out of an flat spin or uncontrolled dive. OFF P3 is all about the challenge of not just downing enemy aircraft, but of staying alive. It's about progressing to newer, more powerful aircraft that tilts the odds in the air to your favor...this time. It's about the accomplishment of slowly ratcheting up the realism level until you can eventually get a confirmed kill in The Great War under the harshest of conditions.
The best thing I can say about P3 though is that I used to be an MMO fantatic. WoW. Everquest 2. Age of Conan. Now I have a new life. I'm a pilot in WWI and victory has never tasted sweeter, because I don't know if I'll be alive tomorrow in order to savor it.
Hellshade
