Hey guys,
Downloaded the free to play game WarThunder yesterday, that just started the open Beta and is based on aerial WW2 combat.
http://warthunder.com/Enjoy the launch trailer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5BWqTXoNjtQIt's pretty comparable to the system of World of Tanks and competing with the upcoming World of Warplanes. I heard from some sources that it is less arcadey than World of Warplanes.
While the website looks comparably cheap, the game itself has more than decent graphics for a free2play game and has a good bunch of features. You can choose bewteen arcade mode, historical mode and realistic mode.
While arcade mode takes place with planes from all the antions mixed (like in WoT) historical mode makes the map you play depended on the nationality of the plane and also offers special missions but also comes with advanced difficulty in flying, which also means more realism and options for the player though.
Realistic mode is in fact quite tricky to master I guess and you have control over more features.
Generally flying the planes feels quite tricky to me, and it's ahrd to get used to. You can switch between different control settings however and change some detailed stuff. I still didn't figure out the perfect controls for me, but I hope this will get better.
In future ground and naval combat will be included as well. Also, the fyling is currently not only based on dogfights fighter vs fighter, you can also control torpedo bombers, dive bombers and regular bombers. You have tanks, AA, airfields, landing boats on the ground you can bomb and on some maps even carriers and warships to fight I think (didn't see it yet, but I think it's in historical mode and I jsut played arcade for learning purposes).
The amount of planes to unlock which happens the pretty much same way it happens in WoT is also quite okay although it's often only different versions of one plane (like 8 different Bf109), but will most likely get extended sooner or later.
You can also play Coop missions with other players vs AI or offline on your own as well for example.
I suck at the gameso far and it's hard to get used to it, but it is fun to me and I can just recommend to give it a try. The tutorials are great and give you a nice overview in how things work. These Russian developers put a lot of work into this it seems and it is a lot more awesome than I expected it to be.
This video by SideStrafe made me try it by the way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuZuaJdFVxAGive it a try and share your opinion
cheers