I have by now had the chance to play a few simulators (flight sims, tank sims, sub sims, that sort of stuff, I'm not talking about SImCity like sims), and as fun as I've had randomly flying around in either randomly generated campaigns or loosely coherent ones, I've had more fun when the missions have at least had some connection to each other, trying to at least tell some for of story and giving a better context to what's going on.
Silent Hunter 5 did this. The game was highly flawed, but I liked the fact that they manage to make what you do feel more important, like a part of the overall war-plan, instead of some random ship-sinking, which was the case in SH4. Wings of Prey also had some semi-coherent mini-campaigns, taking places at different points through the war.
From what I've gathered, the sim-community seem to prefer the approach of more or less randomly generated campaigns, as it gives the games more longevity (which is not a bad thing, when you need to spend several hours in the game in order to understand what you are doing), but I like context.
So, does anyone know of a good sim that actually has a coherent campaign, and that tries to tell a story?


*edit* I'm looking for games portraying realistic (if not real) scenarios. Alternative Cold War scenarios are fine, but I'm not looking for a sci-fi game.

You didn't explicitly list space-fighter sims, but if those are on the table, then: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_commander_4_the_price_of_freedom

Is what you need.

Some space sims sure, most of them, but that's kind of iffy because what makes an authentic space sim? You are dealing with such different physics not to mention aliens and lasers and other sci-fi shit which kind of hurts realism.

IDWar 2 has a great story and a lot of options regarding fighting, flying, or pirating, I just don't know how realistic it can be considered.

Strike Commander!

It fits your description nicely. Story driven, you have a team to care for and just really fun. A bit weak on the realistic simulation part but all the better on the action part.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/strike_commander

Many of the space sims go for the story-drive approach - I pretty sure you have FS1&2 (I think I've seen you on the sub-forums, yes?), which others do you have?

I think why many like the randomly generated campaign is because of the replayability as you said, but even beyond that, even in just one playthrough there is the feeling that anything can happen and I am creating the story or history of my pilot/commander/etc by playing the game. I don't have to replay a mission or succeed or even survive. And thus my character's destiny is almost completely controlled by me and my actions. I may not win the war singlehandedly as the hero of the game or determine the outcome if the story has branch points, but I can create my own story for my character in the larger context of the war they are fighting in. Does that make sense? I think more games with randomly generated campaigns could do a better job of giving that immersion and sense of connectivity to your character, but that I think is part of the appeal. Also a lot of one s based say on WWII and so forth have a pre-built context, so they don't have to provide one. :) They just have to say it's 1942 and you're fighting for/against Rommel in the Desert in a tank.

EDIT: seems I was not the only one suggesting space sims :)

Shame about it being weak on the simulation part, otherwise it would have been the perfect match.



Anyway, I should probably have said not space sims :P I do have quite a few of those (Freelancer, WingCommander, Iwar 1-2, Tachyon and a few other ones). I'm looking for something a bit more realistic. Yea, it makes sense. I would like to see the game world reacting a bit more to what's going on, evolving a bit during the course of the campaign though. In most games it just feels like things are standing still. New waves of enemy fighters arrives, you shoot them down, then you bomb a nearby airfield, then you shoot down some more enemy fighters. Some games do it better than other, obviously, but I still often find myself missing a narrative.

And yes, most WW2 games have a built in context, but it would be nice if the actual battles were given a bit more context themselves, other than just feeling like random battles over random villages. I would not mind if games offered me both a randomly generated option and a pre-built campaign though.

Maybe Red Baron?

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance. It's still lying besides my PC :). It is Star Wars but it is a space simulator (little bit).

The MechWarrior games do a good job of having a story that makes sense and connects the missions together.

Red Baron is more of the random-generated campaign (very good game though)

Its not really story driven so much but I do remember feeling part of a bigger war effort in Novalogic's flight sims. I can recommend F-16, and F-22. Not on gog unfortunately although there are a couple of heli combat sims. You really are excluding quite a bit if you do not want to go for scifi. Wing Commander IV was a game made with a Hollywood budget and actors, eg Mark Hamill and Biff from Back to the Future. Incredible story and long game with many tough decisions. Otherwise, the mechwarrior games have always felt incredibly simlike. Again not on gog sadly. Mechwarrior 4 vengeance, and mercenaries, are exvellent. Mechwarrior 3 is possibly better even. Uhm, and FTL if you are sadomachochist...

I've heard of some randomly-generated campaigns that do attempt this - For instance, I've not played them myself but the Apache vs. Havoc game supposedly have a very good dynamic campaign that does react to previous missions and so forth (I think it was them). There were a couple of others I've heard of that try this. Red Baron 3D campaign does evolve but I don't know if it really responds to player actions in so much as the front changes, new planes get introduced, etc ... (and every plane in your area gets assigned a mission so that you can go off the beaten track and randomly discover things going on all over the place) Fair enough. :) I also like to play story drive campaigns and it would be neat if more games offered fully-fledged story-mode campaigns with great randomly generated ones as well. It would be kind of neat for instance running into the story character once in awhile during the course of the randomly-generated campaign, etc ... Of course that's asking a lot! :)
I think he was excluding the space sims because he has many of them already (it seems all the ones on GOG) rather than not liking them :)

I've heard that the novalogic ones don't respond well to Win7. I actually had the collection of Novalogic games in my cart during the recent steam summer-sale, but decided to not buy the games due to their reported problems. And I don't dislike sci-fi games, I'm just in the mood for something a bit more historical (also, I can't get MechWarrior 3 to run on my computer. 2 & 4 are fine, but 3 just crashes)

That does sound promising. Neither sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, but I guess I'll have to take what I can get. Also, if I can get used to heli-sims, I might just be able to actually play DCS: Black shark in the future, which currently just kicks my behind.


The problem with a niche genre I guess :( The companies that actually makes these games can't sink enough money into them to actually make that a reality.

I don't know to what extent the missions will be connected, but you might want to keep an eye on Kerbal Space Program. Currently it's still in beta, and only has sandbox mode available, but there will be some form of campaign mode.

Some older sims did fairly well with static campaigns. I can say Aces of the Pacific, Aces Over Europe, and Combat Flight Sim 1 and 2 did a very good job of moving forward through specific points in WWII that were familiar enough make you feel like you were making progress.

Some more modern era sims like Jane's F-15 also did pretty good with a static campaign. I actually enjoyed the Desert Shield/Storm campaign in F-15 more than the fictional Iran war scenario they included. If I remember the Iranian campaign was supposed to be the highlight of the game, but I liked taking part in a historical conflict. (I wish I could get my copy working on my modern rig...)

The newer sims with the dynamic campaigns are fun, and actually most do fairly well at swinging the momentum for or against you based on your performance. I don't really care for it as much though as it feels like your single performance makes almost TOO much of an impact.

Unfortunately almost none of these older sims are on GOG. I hope one day that will change though.