First Eagles: The Great War 1918 - Gameplay

Gameplay

Every encounter in World War I aerial combat is a close range turning dogfight that can have many outcomes including the planes colliding, spinning out of control, crashing into the ground, being hit by Anti Aircraft Artillery, or being shot down or killed, depending on the game skill level set and the players skill level.

The game has inherited the "Strike Fighters" engine and so has been designed to be relatively easy to get into. This gives it the tag 'Lite Simulation' which is opposed to hardcore 'study simulations' such as Falcon 4.0 where the learning curve is much steeper. After flying one plane you should be able to hop into any of the other planes and fly them with minimum practice. In reality the Lite category tag places the game halfway between Arcade and Simulation.

The game has a useful 'Single Mission' option that allows the user to choose their mission, aircraft type, weapons, year, nationality, weather, and time of day, and look at a map of the mission area. A set of names are generated to be included on the squadron roster and they are allocated varying skill levels (ranks), which is useful to know when they are flying as your wing men. The Single Mission mode is a good chance to practice for the Campaign mode because it gives all the mission types that the user will face in any campaign.

Mission types include:

  • Intercept: Scramble to intercept incoming enemy bombers before they reach the target.
  • Offensive Patrol: Patrol waypoints over the lines and destroy any enemy aircraft in the target area.
  • Defensive Patrol: Patrol waypoints on your side on the lines and destroy any enemy aircraft in the target area.
  • Army Co-Operation: Destroy enemy tanks/infantry on the battlefield. (Although there are no tanks and infantry on the battlefield. You need user-made mods for this.)
  • Armed Reconnaissance: Search out and destroy enemy ground units.
  • Reconnaissance: Fly to and observe an assigned target.

Flying over the terrain can be long and lonely, although just like the dawn patrols of the Great War the sky can be saturated with a vast array of friendly and enemy aircraft. A time acceleration feature is built into the game as well as a feature to let you warp to the target, although this later feature can place the player in the middle of trouble.

Bombing targets is difficult and the user has to practice dive and low level bombing to complete missions. The planes are of purely World War I tech, as one would expect, and thus have no bombing aids.

Dogfighting, much like the actual Great War, is always necessary thanks to the wild unpredictability of the Le Prieur rockets (available in add-ons). Machine guns have a maximum range of about 0.3 nautical miles (0.56 km), ensuring close-knit scrambles.

Flying over populated enemy territory will result in the Archie bombardment, which, together with available add-on AAA, is deadly at low altitudes, but simply an irritation above certain levels (much like the real Archie).

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