B17 Flying Fortress 2

Flying Fortress indeed

Of all the upcoming combat sim titles, the one that seems to shine brightest is B17 Flying Fortress II. Developed by the England based Wayward Studios, B17 2 promises to take the combat sim world by storm with its depth and attention to detail. Starting from the ground the player has control of an entire squadron of these bombers. You'll need to keep track of the progress of every plane's crew (they each have certain skill levels in various aspects of flying/bombing) and the mechanical status of all the planes as well. After that you'll head off to a sophisticated mission planner that charts out a set of waypoints for your squadron, depending on which targets you choose to bomb. After that comes the fun part - jumping in the planes!

Bombs away!

Graphics and flying

In the build we saw, the graphics were still a bit rough, but the potential is definitely there for a very rich and visually pleasing simulation. The attention to detail is apparent, with weather, and time of day modeling. This isn't an arcade game after all - you'll be flying the planes from the ground to the target and landing back at your base again, so a good amount of time can pass if you make the full cycle. Don't worry - you can turn on the time skip feature to cut out the boring parts.

Ready for takeoff

Man your stations!

Every B17 comes with 10 crew members each manning a critical part of the aircraft. You've got the two pilots, the navigator, the bombardier, the waist gunners, the belly gunner, the nose gunner, and all the rest. B17 2 allows you to jump in and play the role of ANY of the crew members. Want to fly the plane? Jump into the pilot's seat. Can't figure out if you're nearing the target? Get into the navigator's seat and chart your course. Got fighters on you? Take manual control of one of the gunners. Over the target? Yes, you can get into the bombardier's seat, look down the scope and drop the bombs yourself!

Bomb bay doors open!

The crew isn't just static either. As the plane takes damage from enemy fighters and anti air flak, some crew members might get killed or injured. Or some guns might get jammed. In those cases you can tell crew members to jump into other battle stations to pick up the slack. For example, once the bombs are dropped, the bombardier would be a good candidate to try and help un-jam that belly gun.

Seven fighters

One exciting aspect of B17 2 is that it allows you to fly fighters if you so choose. Four Allied fighters and 3 German fighters are flyable in the game, including the P51 Mustang, the Bf-109, and the Me-262 jet powered fighter. It wasn't clear to us if the fighters were flyable in the campaigns or only in the random missions included in the game.

From what we can tell, B-17 2 promises to be one of the most extensive and far reaching combat simulations ever. Microprose is very excited about this title, and rightly so! We hope to get a beta of this game shortly, so expect a hands on preview in the coming weeks.