Combat Flight Simulator 2: Pacific Theatre

After choosing to fly for the Japanese or American forces you can pick from a selection of seven ultra-realistic aircraft.

There are over 100 missions to fly, many based on historic missions from the war. This unusual level of realism and attention to detail comes from the game developers' personal love of flight: many members of the CFS2 team are pilots. The missions themselves are lengthy and often complex, and are just as accurate as the planes; players take part in history, but cannot change the outcomes of battles.

Graphics are very sharp and detailed. However, for optimum performance be aware that you will need a blazing fast machine with a fast video card.

The between-mission story arc is told through 1940s-style comic book panels. This successfully moves the story along while maintaining the feeling that the characters are aware that they are never far from instant death.

While the game does include such famous planes as the US Corsair, Wildcat, P38F Lightning and Japanese Zero its total of merely seven craft left us wanting more, even with the vastly different handling of each plane--an impressive feature.

This, however, is a relatively small shortcoming in an otherwise deep and involving game. If you have a powerful enough PC Combat Flight Simulator 2 is a delight, and is sure to please both war historians and flight sim enthusiasts. --Mark Brooks

As previously stated the excellent graphics, which are true to life, can become boring because all there is to see are the pacific islands. But this is where the realism kicks in.

Life was like that in the latter stages of WW2

If you prefer the european battle ground terrain you can import CFS1 scenery but why should you want to when the in-built mission builder allows you to simply create the mission of your choice ,totally self created..

I have never witnessed such a better combat flight sim

This is a world beater if only for the realistic sound effects

Well done MS


Wonderful graphics, but...   May 25, 2001
15 out of 31 found this review helpful

Yes, the graphics are indeed wonderful, and I can see why Microsoft wrote this game around 3D graphics. But there are few external views to enable this to be shown off, and the horse gets dull after its one trick is seen and no more are coming.

The 'flyability' of the aeroplanes does not seem at all natural to me: good work with the display of the controls is let down by very poor keyboard assignations and a distinct lack of manoeuvrability on the control column. Add to that some very unrealistic flying characteristics (point the P38 Lightning at the ground and that's where it goes, heedless of any flight deviation you might be making on the joystick) and it makes for a huge gulf in sensation between what you're doing on the controls and that 'other world' on the screen. 'Immersive' it ain't.

Gameplay itself is very unrealistic. Shoot down six Zeroes that fly around patiently waiting for you, sink a few destroyers, freighters and heavy cruisers by strafing them with small-calibre bullets, and then get killed as you land because one of your wingmen flies straight into you oblivious to your existence in his world. The missions are completely unexciting and pose very little challenge.

That is, if you can complete the mission. The biggest obstacle to this is not the airborne enemy but Bill Gates. Can Windows manage your machine's memory well enough to get the mission complete before the game crashes through memory exhaustion? Crash-out rate on my machine is somewhere in the 10-20% range. After running this game, a reboot is needed before running anything else.

If I were the Admiral in charge of Pacific Operations, I'd leave the Japanese battle fleets untouched until long after Seattle was bombed into submission.

It's a great piece of graphics software that needs a game adding into it.


Top Dog   February 23, 2001
The Otter (West Yorks)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Ace game which enables you to become part of the action . Can get tedious at times starting of with the crap wildcat but it gets better . Brilliant detail on all visuals . If your thinking of buying a combat sim , get this one and you wont be dissapointed .


Combat Flight simulator 2   October 28, 2000
5 out of 9 found this review helpful

I think that combat flight simulator 2 is a big improvement on the original version because of better graphics more planes faster easier to get into and a lo more refined