A hypothetical Soviet invasion of West Germany sends the Cold War spiraling into WWIII in Wings Over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot. Gamers can climb into one of a dozen of the era's fighter jets and engage in dogfights with 13 Soviet aircraft across central Europe in three campaigns spanning the 1960s and '70s. Flyable planes include the F-100D Super Sabre, F-4 Phantom II, F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt II, British Hunter, and the Harrier "jump jet."
Wings Over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot features a random mission generator designed to give campaign missions a different outcome each time for greater flexibility and replay value. Each successful mission results in pilot decorations, awards, and promotions. The game also features open architecture for mod support allowing gamers to download user-created aircraft, terrain, and campaigns already available on the Internet.
Wings over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot is situated during the Cold War. Some of the most well-known fighter planes from our time have been designed during the Cold War. Think of the F-15, A-10, F-4 Phantom, MIG-21, and maybe the most infamous fighter from that time is the Harrier thanks to its possibility of "vertical take-off". And of course, in this game you have the possibility to defend our airspace from hostiles in all these planes.
I'll just cut to the chase, if you're looking for extreme realism, then stop reading, you won't like it. Wings over Europe is a mix of arcade and realism and unfortunately the mix tends to clot a bit.
Maybe it would have been better to give the developers a bit more time as certainly in the beginning it takes time to get a good attitude towards this title, to find which parts are realistic and which aren't. Where the flight behavior of the planes is pretty good, the rockets are extremely arcade. They tend to remind one of the anti-air missiles from Ace Combat on the PS2 and that just asks for being used a lot. Unfortunately, however, you don't have an endless supply, maximum only six, and then you're pretty fast emptied. Some getting used to is definitely the case here. Once you've got things under control, however, you'll be kicking ass in no time and have hostiles falling down by the bushes.
The most important part of this game is the campaign, situated in the early 60s to end of the 70s, and this period is divided into three parts. The missions are based on real ones and go from standard patrols to huge ground offensives where you have flatten enemy bases with your 200lbs bombs.
Where the game managed to get some altitude with the setting, it quickly crashed after a couple meters. As previously mentioned the mix between arcade and sim isn't quite as it should be but since you can get used to that it isn't too bad. Unfortunately, there are other problems. The graphics are... below standard. Apparently just about everything seems to have come from the 60s. Buildings that look like Duplo blocks, plane textures that are kinda square... Also the sound gets pretty repetitive after some time: pilot one shout "Enemy on our six o'clock" and one second later pilot number two will yell the same. Then it's back to companion number one to repeat himself. You can imagine that when this happens in the middle of a dogfight, you'll quickly put the voice volume to zero and start flying without your wingmen bothering you.
Unfortunately, the idea didn't get the finishing it deserved and it's clear more could have been achieved. On the other hand you get a huge choice of planes which does make up a bit for some of the problems but of course not enough to make the game super.
People who downloaded Wings over Europe: Cold War Gone Hot have also downloaded:
Wings over Vietnam, Strike Fighters: Project 1, Lock On: Modern Air Combat, U.S. Navy Fighters Gold, Whirlwind over Vietnam, Mig Alley, Jane's Fighters Anthology, Jane's USAF
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