Pielstick

I've been playing World of Warships since it went into open beta in 2015. Prior to this I played World of Tanks so this wasn't my first **** game. If you've played World of Tanks you'll know how unforgiving that game is. Make one mistake and that's it, game over. World of Warships is slower paced and gives you time to think ahead and be much more deliberate in your gameplay. Mistakes are punished, but generally you don't die from three or four hits as you do in World of Tanks. The grind is much less painful, and the use of premium camos and signals allows you to move up the tech trees far more quicker than in World of Tanks, but just like that game, at higher tiers the ships and upgrades become very expensive and you'll run short of credits if you're not running a premium account or have some high tier premium ships for grinding credits. Wargaming apparently learned their lesson with this game and didn't include premium ammunition. In fact, there are no ammunition costs in this game. The rock-paper-scissors interaction between the ship classes *was* very good. I say was because that was up until the recent aircraft carrier rework. Right now high tier games are blighted by the aircraft carriers which are simply too overpowered and have completely overturned the established game meta. A carrier can spot you seconds after the match starts, this is especially bad for destroyers. If the carrier then decides to focus you there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. There is no effective counter play for a carrier with a hard on for your ship. Anti-aircraft fire was also reworked for the new carriers and has recently been shown to be working very poorly - there are very few ships which can put up an effective defence against air attack. Right now if you get into a match with two tier 10 carriers on the other team (which unfortunately happens far too often) you're going to have a pretty miserable experience whether you're in a battleship, cruiser or destroyer. I'm also slightly concerned with Wargaming's trademark Russian bias creeping in. Russian battleships have only been in the game for a matter of weeks and they're just about to get a second tier 10 battleship (which no other nation has). Of the two tier 10 battleships they have access to one will be the most tanky and well protected battleship in the game, the other will have the most accurate long range guns and best anti-aircraft guns in the game. World of Tanks is already massively effected by this Russian bias, please don't let it creep into World of Warships! The in-game chat is also far less toxic than in World of Tanks. You will still find abusive team mates, but it's much less frequent than in World of Tanks. I'd give the game a solid 8 before the recent carrier rework. I've gone with a seven because there's still time to save it... if the developers double down and keep the totally unbalanced carrier class as it is now I'd give it a 5.

Hands down the best flight and systems modelling you can get in a desktop flight simulator right now. DCS World simulates these aircraft in significantly more detail and to a higher degree of fidelity than anything that has gone before. You will need to spend many hours studying the manuals, watching Youtube tutorials and practicing yourself before you become proficient. So why the 7 score? No dynamic campaign. You're limited to missions created with the mission builder. Even if there was a dynamic campaign I think the maps are too small to do these aircraft justice. For a flight simulation which touts the hyper realism of the aircraft, it's strange that the maps are geographically so small as to make realistic missions impossible. The aircraft themselves (sold as "modules" which you can add into the base simulation) are excellent, but are a real hodge podge of mis-matching eras and don't complement each other particularly well. For example we have a fantastic F-86 Sabre and Mig-15 but there's no Korean map to play them in. We have a wonderful Saab Viggen but it doesn't belong on any of the available maps (Caucuses, Nevada, Persian Gulf and WW2 Normandy). We've recently got a Mig-19 but there's no other contemporary or supporting modules for it. We also recently got an I-16 but there's no map or other aircraft which are contemporary to it. This extends into the AI plane set too - it's full of combat aircraft of the 1990s, but nothing earlier or later. I really would like to see some more coordination between things so when a new module is released I can fly it against contemporary aircraft and weapons systems. Speaking of which, given the level of realism this sim strives to attain, don't count on flying anything which has been built in the last 20 years or so... they simply can't get access to the necessary information to model it properly. There's still a lot of **** problems which have been around for a while - wonky air to air missile performance and the much complained about rendering issues where you will only "see" another aircraft when it is much closer than you would have been able to see it in real life. Also a rather long history of trigger happy moderators on the official forum. Then again, it's a flight sim.... overly zealous moderators go with the territory. Oh, and the more recent versions of DCS World really need to be run from an SSD otherwise you're likely to get stuttering and micro pauses every few seconds as the map data is loaded from the hard drive. I can't help but feel DCS World sits on the cusp of greatness, but for the time being at least, just falls short until the developer can address the problems I've outlined above.

Five years on from my original negative review, it's time to revisit it... On original release this one took a lot of flak from the online flight sim crowd. It looked like the developer was trying to catch both the original IL-2 Sturmovik crowd and the War Thunder players... but missed both. I believe the company divested itself of the original lead developer who was doubling down on some really poor game design decisions and has taken a much healthier direction under Jason Williams. From the initial missteps this one has matured into a very solid WW2 flight sim. Very decent graphics which don't require a supercomputer to get decent framerates from combined with a very convincing flight modelling make it a very enjoyable experience. The developers have added more single player oriented content, and I hope more is to come, especially by way of historical campaigns. Thus far the expansions have all been set on the Eastern Front, with the first Western Front expansion under development. Whilst this title doesn't even begin to approach the scope of the original IL-2 Sturmovik (and especially the 1946 edition with mods), it's probably fair to say no other flight sim will ever achieve the same scope as that landmark title. However, I do hope the developers continue to explore more WW2 theatres.

I started out with this game in 2012 and have played it on and off ever since. The basic premise of the game is very good, an arcade team based MMO with tanks. Back in 2012-15 it was a very fun and engaging game. Since 2015/16 though it's been on a continual downward slide. Some of the really standout issues are: - Whilst technically it is "free to play", unless you pay, your experience is going to be very frustrating as the grinds to unlock tanks, improve your crew skills and buy new equipment are very long. Don't expect to play high tiers without a premium account or at least one or two high tier premium tanks for grinding credits. - Low tier game play is a total **** show with seal clubbers driving OP or poorly balanced low tier tanks with premium consumables, equipment and high skill crews which are totally beyond the reach of new low tier players. - The game has a very mature player base now and the developers only seem interested in serving up new content and improvements for these long term, high tier players. This exacerbates the low tier **** fest problem. - Matchmaking is horrible. The vast majority of your matches you will be facing off against higher tier tanks, which thanks to the power creep you will very often be almost powerless to fight. - The game mechanics are very heavily RNG based. The accuracy of your shot, armour penetration, damage done by shots.... all are very heavily influenced by RNG. - Map design isn't great with many maps very unfavourable to long range sniper type tanks, light tanks or casemate tank destroyers, whilst favouring the brawler type tanks (i.e. Russian tanks). - Power creep in this game is a huge problem. In order to keep the long term high tier players engaged they keep serving up new tanks which are better, and better, and better. This power creep effects not only the regular tech tree tanks but also the cash purchased premium tanks too. - Russian bias. Russian (ok, Belorussian) developers. The Russian/Soviet tanks are the best in the game. Many of the maps are designed to favour the characteristics of Russian tanks. There's a steady stream of new high tier Russian uber tanks. Anyone who doesn't see this bias is a moron. Really the game should be called World of Russian Tanks. - The biggest servers in terms of population are the Russian ones. The developers only seem to be concerned with keeping the Russian players happy and show little regard for players on the other servers like Europe and North America. - Premium ammunition is one of the most cynical things I have ever seen in video gaming. Yes, this publisher actually *sold* you special ammunition for your tank which would penetrate more armour and do more damage. They later made it worse by making this ammunition available for very large amounts of the regular in-game currency. The net result is every match players are slinging lots and lots of premium ammunition around and this makes slow, heavily armoured tanks almost worthless. This premium ammunition has been at the root of so many of the game's balancing issues for years now and the developers are being painfully slow at addressing it. - The game peaked in terms of player numbers during Christmas 2016. Since then they've been declining. Not catastrophically, there are still plenty of people playing, but the writing is on the wall. The game is in decline now and it looks an awful lot like the publisher is now just milking the existing player base for money, specifically those who are heavily invested in the game. - The latest tech tree to be added to the game is the Polish one. It's full of very uncompetitive tanks all the way up until tier 8. The entire line has been designed to be bad until the high tiers... in order to encourage players to use "free XP" (which you need to pay to unlock) to skip over the junk tanks and get to the good ones. Very, very cynical. In fact there are several examples in the other tech trees where a very good or desirable high tier tank is locked behind a very bad one. The intention being to encourage the use of free XP. TLDR: Right now in 2019 this game is only fun if you are a dedicated player who has been playing the game for years, have multiple high skill crews and have the latest and greatest high tier premium tanks. Anyone else... don't bother. The game isn't fun and is just an exercise in frustration, poor game design and very cynical monetisation. Go and watch the Youtube videos by Claus Kellerman, far and away the most accurate representation of this game in recent years.

The final entry in the long running Flight Simulator series that started so many years ago with Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator. In many ways it's both the best and the worst entry in the series. The best because it's a huge sandbox that can be crammed full of third party content to satisfy even the most demanding flight sim geek. The worst because it's built on a creaky old engine that just doesn't cut the **** any more. Straight out of the box it's a pretty bland experience. If you are prepared to spend the time and money, you can transform it into a much more compelling simulation with astonishingly detailed aircraft, scenery and weather. The downside of this is the cost involved, and that creaky old engine that will eventually collapse under the weight of everything thrown at it. There are newer flight sim platforms out there (P3D, X-Plane) but to be honest right now FSX is still the best for most users.