The pilot and co-pilot could be bleeding to death, and none of the others will do a thing to help them unless you explicitly tell them to. Artificial Stupidity: In the original game, your crew-members show absolutely no initiative.Also, this is Truth in Television: the 8th Air Force's attrition rates reached 20% at times (1 of every 5 airmen was killed on every mission). This is especially despairing because crew-members gain experience from mission to mission, and you need experienced crew-members for the later missions (bombing deep inside Germany). The chance of losing at least one man per mission is close to 100%. Anyone Can Die: The reason you shouldn't get too attached to your crew-members.Fortunately, the original game was significantly easier to master, with or without the manual.It is virtually impossible to play without reading it at least once, and some of the parts (especially the ones about how to work the ridiculously-complicated engines) will confuse the hell out of everyone but the most hard-core players. All There in the Manual: A 250-page manual, for the second game.This work features examples of the following tropes: Fortunately, the settings could still be toned down considerably for easier play, but this is still a very hard-core game. The manual for this game was easily over 100 pages long, with large parts of it dedicated to learning how to fine-tune the goddamned engines. In addition it was possible to take the role of a Squadron Commander, allowing the player to actually reconnoiter and choose targets for bombing raids, then go out and fly the planes to bomb those targets. The sequel introduced much larger bomber formations, better damage modeling, and the ability to fly both P-51 escorts and German Messerschmitt interceptors, also extremely well portrayed. The detail on board the aircraft was nothing short of amazing, to the point where less hard-core players could hardly even cope with the first few missions. Superior to its predecessor visually, it was also ridiculously accurate with both the flight model as well as how things actually went on the plane itself. In the early 2000's, capitalizing on advances in 3D technology, MicroProse released the sequel: B-17 Flying Fortress: the Mighty Eighth. Be careful not to get too attached to a crewmember, as this is a very dangerous line of work to anyone on-board. With time, surviving crew-members would get increasingly better at what they're doing, especially if you yourself performed well while controlling them. It was even possible to take a "back-seat" approach and let your men do all the work on their own, although during the early missions they normally sucked. RPG Elements are also included - any of the crew-members that you are not currently controlling will attempt to do their job to the best of their ability, with their skills governing how well the AI performs. It featured realistic navigation (by comparing the ground below to a map), crude technology and "squad" command (giving orders to the rest of your bomber wing), as well as managing a crew of ten people with various skills and responsibilities. Since strategic bombers aren't considered as cool as fighter-planes, a lot of potential shown by this game was not capitalized upon. ![]() This game is probably the debut of several tropes in video games, although practically no attempts were made to repeat any of them. An hour-long mission suddenly sounds like one hell of a nightmare. Even if you actually manage to get to your home base, expect at least one wheel to refuse to drop properly, in which case one of the crew have to manually crank it down into position. Then the engines start going on fire, fuel is leaking out, half the crew are bleeding to death, and you're still trying to get back to the English Channel to avoid having to bail out over Germany. Injuries on board need to be treated, and it's the player who must assign a crew member to treat another, or perhaps even pull an injured man out of his post and replace him with an able crewmate at an important position on the plane. At the target, it may sometimes be necessary to drop bombs through thick cloud cover (practically guessing where the target is), and the norden sight is a difficult piece of machinery to master. Once enemy fighters show up, it's almost vital to take control of one of the many gun turrets and help shoot the enemy down. ![]() ![]() On the one hand, the player needs to keep an eye out for all sorts of things, like engine malfunctions or navigational errors, throughout the entire flight. Even an uneventful mission can be decidedly tricky. ![]() While the game isn't terribly realistic, it is certainly not an arcade game.
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