 |
| I took out a dock and supply facility cleanly with nape on the first pass. Then I turned around and plugged that boat anchored in the river with Zunis. On the pullout I was so low I had water spray on the canopy! |
The Furor and The Future
YAP’s arrival back in August generated an uproar in the sim forums unlike any other event I can recall. I think it’s because YAP sets a new paradigm in two different areas. One would be enough to set folks off. But two? The temerity!
First, the idea of charging for new missions is novel enough. New planes, weapons, missions, even the occasional campaign — OK, that’s fine, as long as they’re free. But from a third-party developer? That we have to pay for? Then, that marketing plan — 100 missions for a buck a pop — why, that just isn’t done…
Time for a reality check: at $1 per mission no one will be buying a house in Malibu with the profits from YAP.
You need to own WOV to be able to fly YAP. The fact is there aren’t all that many copies of WOV out there. And the YAP team’s research has determined that there are only 300 copies of WOV unsold in the entire world. Any respectable game manufacturer would say you’d be nuts to do an add-on for a game with such a small universe of potential customers.
Not content to surrender to those numbers, YAP’s developers are looking into a way it can become a stand-alone entity. No details are available yet. But the point is, the YAP team is in it for the long haul. They believe in the product and are confident in their ability to deliver what no one ever has, a high-fidelity, historically-based combat flight sim experience. They’ve made the commitment to continue developing YAP and to make it available to a wider audience.
The Bottom Line
When you chip all the spoil away, only one question remains: Is YAP worth the asking price, $1 per mission? This is the ultimate no-brainer. When you consider the work each mission, even the simple ones, represents — the research, the object design, the planning, the testing, the tweaking — you almost feel guilty paying this little for this much. YAP’s developers could have just cranked out 30 or 35 missions, and at a buck a pop most folks would agree it was priced reasonably. They shouldn’t be criticized because they have the determination and persistence of effort to accomplish the mountain of work represented by 100 high-quality historical missions. Reward them for it instead. Get YAP. Yes, it’s worth it.
Reviewer’s System Specs
- Pentium 4, 3.4GHz
- 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- ATI 9800
- WD Raptor SATA hard drive
- Audigy 2 sound card
- CH Products HOTAS
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