Friday Timewaster

War Thunder is a F2P multiplayer simulation of WWII and Korean air warfare. It is quite playable with a mouse at the arcade difficulty level. Some of the best players in that mode use the mouse, in fact. If you want to play in the Big Boy sandboxes -- Historical Battles and Full-Realism mode -- you'll probably want more stuff, a joystick at the least. Logitech makes good stuff and it's inexpensive. If you really get into hardcore play, you'll want rudder pedals, throttle quadrant with fuel mix and prop pitch levers, Track IR, Eyefinity, etc. More is better here, as the flight models are brutally realistic in the non-arcade modes. If you want to learn to fly and fight in World War II aircraft, this is as close as you (or anyone else for that matter) are ever likely get. It looks absolutely gorgeous, even on relatively modest systems. This is an in-game screenshot:



If you've an interest in the subject matter, you won't find a better game.

Don't even waste your time with World of Warplanes; it's as bad as World of Tanks is good. I alpha and beta tested WoWP, and the devs failure to listen to the testers has resulted in a failed game. No, that's not right: they utterly ignored us every step of the way. But War Thunder is fantastic, and if you're a WoT addict, War Thunder has tank and naval components in the works. The eventual goal is massive 100v100 online battles involving all three components.

Give it a spin. It's free.

What's that you say? You can't play that at work? Okay, fine... Go play 9-Ball.


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