B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th!

The Good
B-17 is beautifully realistic and features terrific flight and damage modeling, great atmosphere, and highly detailed and realistic missions.

The Bad
Good Lord Almighty, what a bad interface. Like its predecessor, B-17 asks that you man or direct all the positions in the plane, which is a great idea. Unfortunately, this version does so using the most impenetrable, bizarre interface system possible, which inexplicably features two different interfaces for each position. Finding your way to various functions requires that you use a heiroglyphic-style popup menu system completely separate from positional controls, which defies any sort of logical explanation. The game includes an appalling amount of unnecessary tedium, including a startup and takeoff sequence that requires you sit through several minutes of nothing happening. The piece de resistance is that you have to click on the "signature" line on your orders to be able to take off. If you forget to do that, back to the orders room you go after going through a passel of other menus. What purpose could that feature possibly serve?

The game's nice graphics and realism just don't make up for the fact that there's very little GAME here. It's unfortunate that the basic underlying principles of the original B-17 game were not used here; it's also unfortunate that the designers chose to make it so that much of the game can't be skipped through, meaning, once again, a game in which you spend hours flying in a straight line and only a few minutes actually fighting. Even hardcore sim fans will not be pleased, since the "Crew management" and Egyptian-menu-interpretation aspects of the game takes away from the time you could be spending flying the plane or manning the positions.

The Bottom Line
A very tedious, inefficiently designed game. You'll have more fun signing up for "Warbirds" and flying the bombers in that game.