Free Game : Strategy Air Battles

Air battle always to be an amusing game theme!

Average Joes looking for the chance to fly the unfriendly skies of Europe during World War II should enlist with Air Battles: Sky Defender. While this Pilot Entertainment game screams low budget at times and takes a casual approach to aerial combat that won't please hardcore simulation fans, its great looks and easy, breezy design make it a treat for those looking for something relatively light. Only the lack of proper campaigns and online multiplayer keep it from ace status.

Despite the goofy name that would be more appropriate for an old movie serial than a combat flight sim, Sky Defender is actually a dry look at the European air war during WWII. There are no flights of fancy or Crimson Skies-style wackiness here, just a collection of one-off missions where you hop into the cockpits of such famous British and German aircraft as the Spitfire, Stuka, and Me-109 to shoot it out over English farmland, the English Channel, and the rural countryside of occupied France. Rookie pilots can earn their wings before taking on the enemy, thanks to suites of basic, advanced, and military training assignments. These assignments get you up and running with all the basic concepts of flying and fighting, including everything from making a controlled turn and stall recovery to taking off as part of a squadron.

If you get into a real furball, it will feel just about as scripted as the training missions. All of the assignments are purely fictional, and each is geared to illustrate a stereotypical WWII aerial scrap, focusing on a single iconic style of battle. You take part in dive bombing, low-level attacks on airfields, raids on merchant shipping convoys, and dogfighting against everything from a single British aircraft to huge waves of German fighters and bombers blitzing London at dawn. Mission parameters can also be changed, which lets you custom-rig missions in a limited way by flipping back and forth between Axis and Allies. You can choose your plane, as well as set the time of day and weather conditions.

One thing that can't be altered is the pace. Even though Sky Defender is a casual flight sim, missions share very little with action-first arcade fliers. Most battles start with you close to the action, but you can't just race forward and start blasting everything in sight. Engagements are generally drawn out, and a fair amount of time is spent simply turning, chasing, and stalking enemy fighters and bombers. As in real WWII dogfights, tracking the enemy and striking precisely is the goal here. Flying headlong at waves of aircraft or even an airfield will only get you a quick trip to terra firma.

Still, you've got a good chance of staying aloft. In keeping with the "My First Flight Sim" theme, flight characteristics are extremely forgiving. Although the game has novice and realistic settings, neither is very punishing. Bumping up the difficulty to realistic just seems to result in more stalls and more problems with such things as causing self-inflicted damage by cranking up your speed too high for too long. This will seem a bit like flyboy romper room for experienced flight sim fans, but that appears to be the point. The lack of a demanding flight model lets newbies gain Battle of Britain skills in mere minutes. Controls are also fairly simplified, while the keyboard is responsive and easy to use. You're not gaining much, if anything, by going to a stick, which is an impressive accomplishment because so many casual flight sims get grounded by unwieldy keyboard commands.

Visuals are another plus. Unlike so many budget games, Sky Defender looks and sounds good. The menus are hideous, and the air battles online option on the main screen is a fake-out that takes you to the game's official Web site, but the in-game graphics are just shy of gorgeous. Planes look great and are loaded with colorful details, such as pilot insignias. Bullets also create a nifty trail as they cut through the air. The only drawback is static, slightly blurry terrain that makes it tough to tell how high you are above the ground when strafing or dive-bombing airfields. The engine balances beauty and speed in the way it handles battles that feature 100 or more fighters and bombers without a hitch in the frame rate. Audio effects are also impressive, unless you're a music buff because there are no tunes in the game at all. Pilots shout "Shoot! Shoot!" a little too often, but they also have a wide range of comments that make you believe you're in the midst of an actual dogfight. Cries for help and boasts about victories do a lot to increase the tension when things get hairy. The sound of clipped British accents, propellers, bullets whistling through the air, and the wind blowing past your open cockpit also enhance the atmosphere.

It won't win any awards, but Air Battles: Sky Defender does exactly what it intends to do. This is a budget game with some of the issues common to such releases, but it also provides great bang for your buck and serves as a good, solid flight-sim primer for anyone looking to become a virtual aerial ace.

http://rapidshare.com/files/25835774/Air_Battles_Sky_Defender__PC__CD__English_.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/25922632/Air_Battles_Sky_Defender__PC__CD__English_.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/25922787/Air_Battles_Sky_Defender__PC__CD__English_.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/25922719/Air_Battles_Sky_Defender__PC__CD__English_.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/25921479/Air_Battles_Sky_Defender__PC__CD__English_.part5.rar

password : air

Game for PC : Earth 2140

The explosion of real-time wargames - particularly those set in a rather bleak, postapocalyptic future - has coincidentally served to dampen the spirit of most strategy gamers. Even the more ardent aficionados have been left cross-eyed by the dizzying array of titles now being released, as they vainly attempt to cull the choice collectibles from the rest of the look-alikes spread out across store shelves. Fed a steady diet of Command & Conquer clones, it's no wonder that many players have taken a wait-and-see attitude before settling on the supposed next-generation champions, lingering reservations about freshness and unique gameplay continually toying with the consciousness and pocket book of the average player. Interplay's Earth 2140 seizes upon this common real-time thread, portraying a polarized world split largely along geopolitical lines. In one corner we have the conspicuously named United Civilized States (UCS), comprised largely of the Western Hemisphere and key areas of Western Europe and North Africa. In the opposite corner struts the Eurasian Dynasty (ED), which, naturally enough, engulfs the Asian and Eastern European world. As we soon learn, the sanctity of our once noble world has been severely compromised, irradiated by countless nuclear detonations and scarred by incalculable destruction thanks to another mindless world war unfettered by the ignorant concept of mutual assured destruction. As a result, both factions have had to resort to constructing huge underground civilizations, occasionally reemerging on the desolate surface to extract precious minerals and other important natural resources, which can only be found on the planet's crust. By the year 2140, both sects now realize that the time has finally come to lay claim to the world's remaining dwindling resources if they ever hope to survive the perpetual holocaust blanketing the planet. Both in-game and background graphics are breathtaking, embedding the powerful visual appeal of advanced, fully realized weaponry and structures with cutting edge special effects. Mission briefings are stylistically rendered, seemingly borrowed from the cold cyber-soldier perspective evinced in Terminator. Units and structures are fully animated, replete with turning turrets and twisting torsos all recklessly unleashing a torrent of hell-raising flame and fury. Unfortunately, the color scheme for the ED units blends into the background on both the strategic and tactical windows, making them very difficult to discern amidst the unsettling lush green backdrop depicted in certain missions. Likewise, text displayed in the information panel is equally hard to decipher, the soft red and green hues used to identify objects mismatched amidst the brilliantly defined interface. The pacing of the missions is rather clumsily choreographed. For instance, the first four missions on the UCS side involve the routine destruction of penny packets of enemy units. In the fifth mission though, you are immediately thrust into a "kill or be killed" setting, your small ragtag force of assorted units and supporting structures beset by an unremitting drove of ED forces. As a result, the stepped-up sequence of slowly immersing you into the overall framework of the game is critically compromised. Beyond the aesthetics and rudimentary features, Earth 2140 introduces a rather unique mechanism surreptitiously dubbed a "Virtual General." In effect, you can group together various units, then hand them off to a computer-controlled assistant who will lead them in either a defensive or offensive manner, determined at the outset by you. Frankly, because situations can fluctuate in a minute's notice, there is hardly any need to actually employ this option - it's far more useful to retain control over every unit in an effort to meet both short- and long-term mission goals. Although the game desperately clings to the precepts espoused by most real-time wargames, Earth 2140 shouldn't be quickly dismissed as just another Command & Conquer retread. Clever innovations - such as the Virtual General - some rather remarkably crafted segues and mission briefings, and the employment of 22 dissimilar unit types for each warring faction help to distinguish this game from all the other C & C clones that have glutted the market. Unfortunately, once these subtle nuances are stripped away from the titillating veneer, you will readily discover the all-too-familiar battle doctrine of "building and killing units faster than your opponent" still morosely bubbles to the surface. And, when you consider all of the other real-time wargames that have capitalized on this somewhat tired theme, you begin to realize just how much of an impact the Command & Conquer phenomenon has had in reshaping the computer gaming industry. Enjoy, but be advised that Earth 2140 is just another sheep in wolf's clothing.




http://rapidshare.com/files/7165527/E2140.zip