Falcon 4.0: Allied Force (PC CD)

But Falcon 4 kept a solid fan base, many of them have been releasing pathes and updates to the original, making it more playable. This has now led to Falcon 4's re-release, and while the game has had MANY improvements, it is still a re-release and not a sequel.

Graphically, Falcon 4.0 is far from ground breaking, and while the original graphics have been enourmously improved they do not quite reach the level of Lock-On: Modern Air Combat, they are however roughly equal to FS2004, and other slightly older titles.

It isn't the graphics that make this game stand out though, it's the gameplay. First of all, there's the campaigns: two of them with one over Korea, and the other over the Balkans. The land area is vast, and both campaigns can be played in the past (1990's), present or near future. What really makes these campaigns stand out is the fluency with which missions are put together: if you take out a target in one mission, it will also be gone in the next. Every kill you make has an impact on the campaign.

Finally, there's the gameplay. Falcon 4.0 is probably the most detailed simulation of an aircraft ever released for home computers. Such a detailed simulation does come with a price though: literally hundreds of key commands, infact printing the complete list would use FOURTEEN pages!

In terms of realism, gameplay and general polish, Falcon 4: Allied Force is almost unrivaled in the flight-sim genre. Graphics do seem a bit dated (even with the improvments), and sometimes parts of the game seem not to have been updated. The game is also perhaps a little too in depth for more casual gamers. Overall though, this game is fantastic, and has everything you might expect from a combat flight-sim.

Since that golden age it seems the flight sim is no longer as popular as it once was; or perhaps the market for computer games has expanded so that it now occupies a smaller slice, proportionally speaking. Either way, one thing is clear. Most flight sims on the market are SERIOUS. Falcon 4.0 is the SERIOUS-IST.

I did less work for my degree than it took me to learn how to fly the F16. I can now operate 6 different forms of radar, can flick all the little switches in the right order to turn on the auxilliary power supply, and I can calculate ideal turn rates based on G-forces and altitude. But it took a lot of work; the PDF manual that comes with this edition is some 700 pages long and not entirely well written. I spent a lot of time picking up pointers from the many web-based virtual squadrons out there.

The game itself does some things very well. The campaign is engaging, instant action can be a good blast, and there is a huge degree of customisability. Why not 5 stars? It's missing some things. The graphics and overall feel of the game feel very dated. I don't mean this in a shallow way, like that it doesn't look pretty. I mean it's not very nice to interact with, in the way that most modern games are. The tutorials don't tutor at all, you've got to have printed off the relevant chunk of the manual and hold it next to the screen while you fly to use them. There's nothing like tooltips over the myriad buttons, and the learning curve is way steep, even if you have played a few sims before.

More lethally, there isn't much to drive you through the game. Sure the campaigns are good and complex, but there isn't much in the way of exciting stuff going on to make you want to log in and play a quick 30 minutes in the way that something like Rome: Total War would do.

That said, Falcon 4.0 is probably the best military flight sim available at the moment. In a way this is a shame, as it is so incredibly hardcore it's not likely to appeal to the casual gamer and so this segment of the market will continue it's final descent into geekish nerdery before publishers decide it's more profitable to knock out a few generic FPS's rather than concentrate on what used to be one of the crowning jewels of the PC as a games platform.