User Reviews (1 - 11 of 58)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Great Fun, Little Realism.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: December 07, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Although the Dog-Fights are really fun, it tends to get a little boring when you've beaten the game 10 times on maximum difficulty. The single missions keep it alive, but have the same overall flaw. Quick combat tends to be the same way because there is no randomness. 1-9 planes will come at you and as soon as you kill all of those, 1-9 more will come at you again. Also, although the planes look like they have there own shape, they are really blocks to the computer, which means you may hit things which you really didn't. However for a game created in 1997 it's pretty good.

P.S. it is really cool when you see a plane go down in a fire ball.

Microsoft again

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: December 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

... The graphics are poor, as is the frame rate. The background is terrible. Naturally this product doesn't work well with anything that isn't made by Microsoft, including my Joystick. You have to use the rotate as a rudder, which makes using the rudder difficult. If possible, go to someone else, such as Jane's for a good simulator.

Snore

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: October 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a joke of a game. Let's see, a campaign can be finished in an hour. The AI makes you conclude that enemy fighter pilots have a deep vindictive nature (is mine the only plane in the sky?). All in all, this game is like a new level of computer chess--boring as hell, and yet somehow intelligently scripted [SCRIPTED]!

Boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 8
Date: January 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have quite a few flight simulation games and this one gets boring fast. Their are very few missions to choose from and not a lot of aircraft to choose from either.

Don't waste your money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: September 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been playin flight sims since I was about six years old. I have played many that I didn't like at first, but after time I liked them. This, however is not one of them. The controls are terrible. The training missions have some jerk instructor yelling at you whenever you don't do something right. I wish I would have known this was going to be such a frustrating and impossible game. Aces over Europe was much better.

hard

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 13
Date: December 28, 1999
Author: Amazon User

this game is very hard. it only has guns, no bombs and the plain is hard to control i recomend u dont get this combat game because it is hard to stear and doesnt stear fast to get out of trouble of other plains. DONT GET IT.

I Hate CFS1

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: June 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Combat flight simulator 1 is the worst ww2 game I ever played. It has bad graphics, terrible controls,and unrealistic weapons. It takes 400 mg rounds to nail a kraut! Even Battlefield 1942 puts it to shame.

Great graphics, not so great campaigns

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: June 22, 2000
Author: Amazon User

A good WW II flight sim should contain 4 key elements: Great graphics, great campaigns, realistic flight modeling, and good flight damage modeling. Combat flight simulator gets 2 out of 4. The game has some of the best graphics I have ever seen in a flight sim. The texture mapping on the landscapes is so detailed and sharp that sometimes you'll swear its real. In fact, it looks so realistic that at times the CGI planes look out of place against the more true to life terrain. The cockpits are nicely rendered and the planes look fantastic. When a plane takes damage and begins to stream smoke the effect looks very good.

The flight modeling seems to be pretty accurate. You have three different levels of difficulty with the `Ace' setting giving you the most realistic experience of flying these planes. The planes never seem too difficult to handle but don't fly themselves by any means. I have found myself in several spins that were either difficult to get out of or ended in me ejecting from the plane. Good stuff. But don't let the graphics convince you this is a good game. There are some faults, damage modeling being the biggest problem. While in combat, I have blasted hundreds of rounds at enemy planes and witnessed bursts of debris come off the plane but nothing in terms of the degree of damage is seen - no bullet holes, no charred/burnt sections, no parts of the plane missing. In the intro you can see a couple of planes lose their wings in a blaze of destruction but I have yet to create this same effect in actual gameplay. And, surprisingly, when your own craft is destroyed you get the same stock explosion with obviously simple polygons representing the debris of your plane giving your demise a kind of "canned" feel. These problems detract from the virtual realism you want in a flight sim.

The campaign modes are the least interseting aspect of the game and leave a lot to be desired. I want a sense of "being there" from my sims, outside of combat. I want detailed debriefings after a mission. I want to feel a sense of camaraderie with my fellow virtual pilots. I want to know who made it back and who didn't. I want to see how many kills my squad mates got so I have a benchmark with which to compete. I don't care if the missions are scripted or dynamic so long as they have that feel that really immerses you in a campaign. The campaigns here fall flat.

If you are the kind of flight sim gamer who doesn't care about immersion in a campaign then the graphics alone will not disappoint. There are also some pretty good single mission that are not tied to a campaign but the re-playability value based on the single missions alone probably wouldn't be worth the purchase. There is also a quick mission feature which puts you right in the middle of battle. While this is a pretty good feature you can set the number of opponents in a squad but you can't give yourself any wingmen, so its just you against however many enemy pilots you choose.

If you're into graphics, definitely get this or Jane's WW II fighters. If you want great gameplay and engrossing campaigns go with European Air War. I am hoping for better things from Combat Flight Simulator II - Pacific Theater coming in 4Q 2000.

Like Meatloaf Every Tuesday Night...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: December 29, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This is the game I bought a new CD-ROM, Voodoo 3D accelator card and almost a new $1,500 PC to play! It chokes on my old 133 MHz unless everything graphical is set to wire-frame-and-polygon scale.

Initially very fun, until you play it a week or so. Then you realize that the things that make computer games really fun -- role playing where your squadron gains more experience -- is missing from this flight sim. Sure, the dog fights are fun, but this game tends to give you that ghostly 'I'm all alone in Sim Land' feel after while. The campaigns are long strings of same-o missions. A case in point: After you take off, you can skip to the action. Pretty soon you find you never fly anymore, just skip to the action, fight, and skip back home. That gets old fast and pretty soon you'll delete this ol' dog off your hard drive and look for something with more depth.

fun, but not for long

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I make a hobby of owning and playing flight simulators, and can really appreciate both realism and playability. While this game has a little of both, it left me wanting so much more.

Gamers familiar with other WWII titles like the older Aces over Europe and the newer Janes WWII Fighters will feel like they're flying a paper airplane after a few flights in this sim. While a fantastic attempt at simulating the flying experience was made, and succeeded in most points, there's just something about the whole flight package that leaves me wanting more. After a flying a few missions with this game, I go right back to WWII Fighters for the whizzing bullets, radio chatter, textured clouds and flak, groaning and creaking airframe during a tight maneuver, spinning propeller blurring your view ... In short, while we can't expect any one game to give us everything, I still expected a game touted as one of the "flight simulator" series to give me more realism.

As for playability and "fun", the game has a little more. Don't let anyone tell you it's an easy game either. Playing the missions from either side gives you a pretty good feel for the campaigns fought so long ago. If your team (axis or ally) felt the crunch, or was flying high, you can really feel it here. Damage-to-flight is pretty realistic, and thought it may seem that your fighter is taking more damage than it should be allowed to, you're quick meat in a dogfight with so many control surfaces and avionics all shot up.

If I were to sum this game up, it's fun, but lacks the "feeling" of realism some of us purists out there are looking for.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next 

Actions