Nuclear Option

This game is absolutely perfect. There is no real aircraft so there is no expected performance of them allowing the ability to make aircraft well-balanced. The controls are extremely simple for a game that allows you to do so much even firing a salvo of missiles at a set of targets. The combat is realistic and yet still extremely fun with a perfect bit of 'arcadyness' to balance the difficultly yet still have it be a fun and engaging experience. The Damage Model of this game is absolutely phenomenal I do not have enough positive words to explain how beautiful it is to look at that amazing little screen and watch a aircraft get nailed by a insane shot and slowly fall apart as the fire burns the carcass and the aerodynamic forces rip it apart, It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome. The aircraft in this game so cool, like I get it, realistically it would probably be a nightmare to maintain, probably inefficient too, and cost a lot of fuel; but a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tilting quad rotor gunship has to be the coolest looking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing ever. Plus the Alkyon AB-4 what an beautiful concept and an amazing look. Once before I previously saw some video talking about Nuclear Option way before and the video really made me think this was just some simple game where you choose a plane and test out nukes and I didn't end up looking into this game until years later. This game is NOT just that. It's an amazing mix of the arcade feel of ace-combat and realistic aircraft combat of war thunder. Although it is not just limited to air-air combat this game has amazing ground strike combat too, yet it's not always super easy and boring there is a challenging difficultly to it too. Oh yeah and there is still nukes some small, others that could wipe out an entire island. special weaponry that launches itself into space and plummets to the earth on a target at insane speeds. (can have a nuclear warhead by the way) Just to think this game is $20 and with that $20 well spent there is NO grinding to a level anywhere near the point of some other certain awful disgusting flight combat sim. (War Thunder) The only "grind" in the game is the flow of going out, overwhelming enemy SAM defenses with AGMs and glide bombs, and/or downing aircraft and returning back (Or dying [No judgement it's not the easiest game.]) with a successful sortie and earning money to get even better aircraft or to spend them all on fancy nukes :3 (ALL within ONE [1] session in the span of an HOUR, maybe hour and a half MAX, not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MONTHS [like War Thunder]) Just to think this game can run well on my gaming laptop although to mention currently the larger scale escalation modes are a bit choppy on the frames and performance but the other smaller scale modes are still very fun also this game is like 3 GB or something and yet offers so much but if you have the extra storage space and want to do some cool things, although not directly supported through the Steam Workshop the Mods for this game go INSANE; whole aircraft (there is a mod that just adds an F-16), Quality of life changes, a ground collision avoidance system (GCAS), allowing the CI-22 Cricket to carry big demolition bombs, an autopilot system, now I do not know if it works but I even saw a mod that says it lets you play YouTube videos on the little screen in the cockpit, like there is so much modding potential for this game it's insane. Also, side note, but low-key, the music is absolute top tier I've never felt more badass in my life, The tracks perfectly match the feelings of aircraft combat in that specific aircraft so well to me. If I didn't like aircraft or the combat I would probably just buy the sound track because it is low-key just soo good. (seriously look up Justin and Jeremy Sahl on YT or Spotify) IMPORTANT!!!: Apparently a lot of people give up the game really quickly because of the virtual joystick but note this YOU CAN DISABLE THE VIRTUAL JOYSTICK IN THE SETTINGS!!! using WASD + QE to fly is pretty easy once you get used to it, although it does make pulling off accurate gun shots more difficult but they are SO satisfying when you do hit them and get good with it. also for the people who don't know the other game, Loser Thunder's (War Thunder's) company, Gaijin, has a patent on their cursor thing where you aim the circle and the game determines what controls the aircraft needs to use to guide the nose of the aircraft to that circle. This means that other games, including Nuclear Option, can't have it or they have to pay Gaijin. (although... there may or may not be a mod for it.. :3) My only thought of something that could be a problem to others is learning the concept of how all the aircraft stuff works. like understanding aircraft stealth, how a radar works, how to notch a radar, IR guidance concepts, How a flare works, how jamming works, difference between noise jamming and DRFM, understanding the RWR pings, the difference between ARH and SARH, all that kind of stuff but then again it's LIKE ace-combat but it's not so simple that it's boring and way too easy and it love this game because of this.

Great game!

play if you want to envoke the NUCLEAR OPTION (my pc specs are bad but this runs better than most games)

Good clean fun, runs well on low-end hardware. CPU heavy, light on GPU and RAM.

Just awesome.

Fun game, best played with a controller

really good lower end substitute if you cant afford dcs like me