Soviet Monsters: Ekranoplans

tutoriel inutile, contrôles foireux, commande dures à manier.

The worst game I have played this year so far the graphics are ok and thats about all thats good I couldnt get it to fly I only had the propellers going and I couldnt load 8 missile carriers onto the plane only 4. I was absolutely shocked at the price tag there is no way on Earth that this game should cost this much £10.99 please save your money. I was looking for games on Ebay when I came across this Ekranoplans so for 99p yes 99p and not £10.99 I thought well why not so if you want to find out how bad it is please try and buy it off Ebay.

trash game

Soviet Monsters : Ekranoplans is a simulator of the enormous Soviet era behemoths of the Caspian Sea that used the “Wing In Ground” or “Ground Effect” that made the Lotus Formula 1 team such a force in 1977 and 1978. The physics behind it all is more than I will go into here, that’s what google is for, but suffice it to say that these things were efficient, fast, and big enough to scare the faeces out of the CIA in the 60s. In the game, you are given the job of captaining one of these beasties, selecting and training crew, picking missions, and trolling off to either deliver cargo, blow things up, or do other militaristic things in one of five locations, each of which is enormous. Once you get a mission from the muckety mucks with scrambled egg on their hats you pick a crew, pick a craft from the 12 in the game and trundle off to do as you are told just like the good little son of the Родина you are. I was sadly unable to do much of this thanks to “finding” the land at high speed, hitting islands that I couldn’t steer around, and generally getting frustrated enough with the control scheme that I ended up shutting the game down and firing up an old friend of an FPS and slaughtering bots until the urge for violence faded. These craft are not small and have a tendency to steer like a drunken cow on roller skates. The controls are responsive in the same way that the apple, pineapple, pen song is “slightly annoying”, the sound effects are almost straight from the classic 16 bit Microprose simulations the visuals evoke. Tutorials and other screens are visually more than a little aged reminding me once again of Microprose products and don’t think you’ll be able to tweak anything from in game either, the only way to get to game options is through the launcher. The resolution choices top out at 1600 x 1080 and even at that resolution the text in the menu screens disappears off the edge of the screen. The detail choices are totally uninformative being fastest to fantastic which is a total misnomer. Controls are also customised from the launcher which is great if you forget to set them up after grabbing a new controller, it really is. In truth, nothing can be tweaked from inside the game so you better make sure it’s all sorted beforehand. What little information provided by the tutorial messages is bewildering and short on information, there is a definite feeling of incompleteness to the whole affair with filler text still being in place at release. Soviet Monsters : Ekranoplans had a lot of promise, detailing the operation of something so awesome it scared the CIA stupid, but If you’re in the mood for a 90s/00s era simulator fix, do yourself a favour and avoid this one. Go play one of the classics on Amiga or ST like Silent Service 2 or M1 Tank Platoon instead.