I pre-ordered UV 3 weeks before it came out, and must have been one of the first in Europe to get it. Since then I've averaged about 3 hours a day playing, including 3 week trip round Europe playing on a laptop. Bored? You must be joking. Each patch makes the game better to play, simply because it becomes more like real operational warfare than any other game comes close to. TOAW comes second, but it's light years away in my opinion, and no other game I've played comes close after 20 years of computer games..
I've just finished a 4 hour battle spread over 3 days of game time. Scenario 15, October 42, and the USN desperately trying to hold a newly captured henderson Field. In the first real battle of what had been so far a rather conservative campaign, what should appear but 11 Japanese carriers spread over 5 TFs in the same hex!:eek:
They arrived 3 hexes from Lunga just as my 2 carrier TFs, each with 3 carriers, sailed in from the opposite end of Ironbottom Sound, close in to Lunga to benefit from LBA cap.There followed 3 days of carrier battles beginning with an attack by 170 Jap bombers escorted by 90 Zeros opposed by 175 F4Fs. You may have seen this scale of fighting before in the game, but I hadn't. No shortcutting the combat animations, just 4 hours of me sat screaming at the screen and jumping out of my chair every time one enemy plane went down.
The score after 3 days:
US: Enterprise undamaged (talk about realism...it's weird)
Wasp and Saratoga beached at Lunga with 70 points each of flotation damage
Yorktown, Lexington and Hornet operational but hurt.
IJN: Junyo, Shokaku, Akagi and Zuikaku sunk, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu severely damaged, Hiyo and Zuiho hurt, Shoho and Ryujo apparently OK.
The highlight: watching Washington and North Carolina sail up the Slot in daylight under a heavy CAP to sink the damaged Akagi and Junyo with 16 inch shells.
Being a loyal Englishman, what I want now is the Mediterranean campaign, but I suppose WITP will do in the meantime.
Out of interest, my uncle was an RAF engine fitter seconded to the RAAF in 1942: he spent 2 years fixing Beaufighter engines on bases in New Guinea and the islands off Gili Gili.
Well done Matrix, and thank you.
Anyway, it looks like my prayers have been answered. I have paid out the but for games like NWN, MOHAA, BF1942 and Sid's Gettysburg and Antietam. 
