2.0 First Flight

The client updated fine, figured I would make sure the video drivers were current as well.

First thing that struck me was the new hangar. What's up with the Zeppelin? Where are the doors to get my aircraft out of here? Seems the aircraft in this environment have a more 3D look to them! After I got over those revelations, I poked around the UI causally, nothing appeared to leap out me is being totally different and warranting a closer look. Another inspection of things told me all of my aircraft were still here, something about one or two vanishing had me a bit worried (not sure were I heard that from).

However, I didn't want to spend a lot of time here, I wanted to take to the air and experience for myself how much the game had truly changed from when I last played....

Now, before you give into the urge of watching the video below, a few things to consider. One, I am a little rusty in the production and editing department, two months of not making this type of content defiantly shows, plus I found out there are no replays for now, so my usual opening scene is missing (if you have seen my previous movies). Secondly, the game is being played in "as installed" state, meaning no custom configurations (like my paint schemes) or key remapping (my old settings didn't make the transfer to the new version, something I corrected in later battles). And finally, I played "cold," as I stated earlier, I logged zero hours on the CT server, so my grey matter and muscle memory was still programed for 1.9.

But, I figured that the many, many hours in my tier VII Gloster Meteor would be enough to make it through this initial ordeal....

Okay, where to begin?

Flying a fighter, I stuck to the doctrine of going air-to-air as much as possible. However, either the Meteor has lost a lot of it's former performance or the air is a lot stiffer than it was before (this has happened in an earlier update 1.4 or 1.5, can't remember which one for sure). Perhaps, the gravity pull has been cracked up a bit? For whatever reason, the plane felt heavy, slow to turn and a whole lot less maneuverable than memory serves. A very disappointing experience.

I don't particularly like how cluttered my screen has become, debating on relocating/removing the radar scope, for example.

I am not a fan of respawning, despite the fact I died more than once during this encounter. I have learned and accepted that you should get one life to live and by making the most of that, through wise target selection and environmental awareness, one life is all you should need. I believe respawning can and will promote a certain level of carelessness, which will dull the learning curve of the game, making for some less-than-enjoyable battles.

Speed, maneuvers and dogfighting is what I want out of Planes and to a degree, that aspect is still there. During the Meteor battle, I was able to get the drop on enemy aircraft and fire off a lot of rounds, some even hit my intended target too! The loss of the lead indicator is a handicap I could learn, in time, live without. Without this handy tool, I could adapt to zooming in (which is an experience of it's very own) or just eyeball ahead of the target and roll the dice on making some hits.

There are a few other things I didn't experiment with, such as high/low altitude penalties (take a fighter below the deck and see what it does/doesn't do), make notes to myself on boost/weapons cooldowns and a few other items.

As I write this, I have a few more battles under my belt and I still have mixed feelings about things. I can't say for certain that I am fully onboard with the radical changes that came with 2.0, but I am not going to dismiss this title from my computer either. For the next while, I will play out a battle here and there, when I get the time and try to experience more than what I have thus far.