DID EF-2000 V2.0 Has been tested, not real impressive. Their method of challenge is to simply overwhelm the player with enemy fighters. When in combat against 12 or more enemy even a novice will eventually shoot you down if he can get behind you. I say "12 or more" but it really only takes one after you shoot the other 10 down, are after one and another one gets behind you. Then you are out of chaff and flares and by then your wingmen are all dead. This game doesn't get more than two stars from me and I can't recommend it. **
X-plane 8 by Austin Meyer
Demo Reviewed by
Bryon Smith
12-21-2004
What would you like me to tell you? I downloaded installed and tried the demo and in less than 60 seconds wanted to rip the thing out of my computer and throw it across the room! He thinks that a potential customer can get a feel of the simulation in 6 minutes. It takes 6 minutes, actually more for a new person to find the settings and fix them so the demo can be used. I saw a message that said "you can control the entire thing from the joystick and keyboard." I never could get the joystick throttle to work even though I went to the settings and set them, it had no effect on the simulation. I found the keys list and unlike other better flight sims X-plane uses F1 and F2 for the throttle. I could throttle it up but the throttles soon returned to OFF all by themselves. I kept pushing them up but they kept returning to OFF until a message appeared on the screen that said my 6 minutes was up and my joystick was no longer going to work, at which time my "simulation" crashed. Twice after the joystick quit working the F1 and F2 controls did work for awhile but I crashed for the lack of being able to control the thing with the keyboard.
The message in the window said "you can go ahead and use the simulation with the auto pilot or with the keyboard." So I printed out the keyboard list and began looking it over. There isn't one thing on the list that is self explanatory or logical. F doesn't control the flaps and B doesn't control the breaks and the arrow keys do not control the direction of the airplanes and the + and - do not control the thrust. Again a message popped up on the screen telling me that my 6 minutes were up and that my joystick would not work. I all ready knew that, it had told me a few moments before. I fought with it for another 10 or 15 minutes using the elevator and rudder trim keys 9 and 0 and left and right brackets. Let me tell you something, you can't fly this sim using trim controls to replace the actual rudder and elevator commands. It constantly wants to go up and down and left and right and there's not one thing you can do about that, unless you can figure out how to use the autopilot. Which wasn't clear either in the length of time I spent with it. The only good thing I can see about X-plane 8 over X-plane 5 was the graphics. The panel graphics were a HUGE jump over V5. There are a lot more options in the control settings. There are quite a few less airplanes though and there are no Cessna's in the Demo version under the category of General Aviation. You can't go anywhere except where they put you in the demo. The runway actually vanished on me and put me on what might have been a grass strip so I don't know if that was another bug in the program or if it really was suppose to be a grass runway. A bad place to start out in an F-22 if you ask me.
As for the feel of the sim, it's just about the same as the old V5. No real improvement there. The joystick and everything else failed in 6 minutes so it's difficult to give the sim a fair shake-down. I'm certain that Austin Meyer doesn't want me to ever get the opportunity to get my hands on the full working version of X-plane 8 because he knows I'm a pilot and a software reviewer who if faults can be found in the thing I will find them and tell the public about it.
I expect that by the time anyone spends a few moments with the demo they will quickly decide they do not want to spend hard earned money on this flight simulation software. I will not recommend it or the author Austin Meyer, or the company who market this software for them. And once again I will remove the software from my computer and get on with better things, like Lock On from UBI Soft or Comanche 4 from Nova Logic, or heck, work is better than this. :-) For now that's all you get from me on this pile of junk software. If you have any horror stories about X-plane you would like me to post on here please Email me. If you have other software you want to post a review about please Email me. Until later, happy sims to you. :-)
X-plane 5.52, 5.66, 5.99 by Austin Meyer
Reviewed by
Bryon Smith
12-19-2004
Several years ago (1998-99) back when the good simulation games were being phased out to make place for the first person shooter games I retired as director of the Independent Software Consultants and let my staff and crew go their own ways. Those who loved the older style sim games didn't care much for the newer first person shooter games. Back then I was also on assignment with a game review company that constantly sent me CD's with demo games on them. I managed to completely total out my computer back then with those demos, making me gun shy to use demos after that. All of my reviews however were written based on the testing of the full store bought version of each game.
When I write a review on software I do my best to be unbiased, fair and balanced. If it's a good game or simulation I will say so; if it's a stinker I'll tell you so. If the game company or author is rude and unhelpful when you need help I will report that too. I try to report as honestly and accurately as I can on the strong points or weak points of a simulation. Usually I'll spend several days to several weeks testing a product before I complete my review on that product. If a simulation game or program proves itself so badly defective that it qualifies as a piece of junk in the first hour then I'll tell you so, and that's usually the end of my testing of that product.
Back about the time I was getting out of the review business, as I mentioned above, and also to pursue other endeavors I had collected about 15 boxes of sim. software that never was opened for testing. Normally I work 7 days a week and quite a few hours a day but being my own boss and owning my own office if I'm feeling out of sorts, sick, bad headache, etc I may do something else for a few hours or a day. Everyone has their recreation activities, fishing, golfing, sports, flying, SCUBA diving etc. My general preference is to play with one of my favorite simulation games, build and test missions and then share those missions on line with those who enjoy the same games. http://www.dream-link.org/comanche4/comanche_4_missions.htm There's a link to my Comanche 4 missions.
So yesterday I was passing through the hallway and looked up on top the bookshelf to see those brand new boxes of "old software" that never were tested or reviewed and I saw X-plane 5.52 up there. Being a pilot myself, brother to a flight instructor, son in-law to a retired fighter pilot, friend to several other types of pilots, fighter pilots, jungle pilots, helicopter pilots, jumbo jet pilots, etc. I took it down, read on the box where it says it's better than MS Flight Simulator (which I have tested) opened it up and installed it just to see if the writing on the box was true. It opened up into the cheesiest first page menu that I've ever seen in my life. I'm not sure you could even call it a menu. I selected the F-22 (being one of my favorites from other sim games) and selected KFSM (my home city) and told it to go to that airport. When the screen changed and I saw the graphics I was shocked at how bad they were. There was no list of commands accessible from there either. I programmed the joystick for the game and only had 3 functions. Pitch, yaw, throttle, that was it! Sitting here with a high dollar CH F-16 USB Combat Stick with 10 buttons and I get to use what? 3 controls!
I hit the throttle and took off making night flight to Little Rock, AR and back. The jet sim kept wanting to turn upside down on me. As hard as I tried to keep the thing pointed in one direction it just would not cooperate. I turned it around and managed my way back to KFSM and landed and this piece of junk thing literally walked (wheel walking) all the way down the runway to the very end. Immediately I got out of the game and went straight to the x-plane.com website looking for a patch to fix it with. Not seeing a link to the patch I wanted I wrote a message to the author of the sim, Austin Myers, who promptly responded with a very rude message telling me there was nothing wrong with his sim and I was basically an idiot. I responded trying to explain that I had looked for the patch but didn't see it, so he sent me another rude message telling me that, yes, I was an idiot. He even sent me pictures of the link where I could find the patches, so while I was still reading his message I started downloading the patch. I even wrote him a short thank you note, before I got to the end of his message, where he called me, yes, "a stupid idiot."
This guy twisted the things I said into insults, even though I was doing my best to compliment him on certain things. If I said I was afraid of installing demos he would say that I wanted demos that would run for a long time. Well certainly a 6 min demo is not a demo at all, it is an insult. And if I said, "You misunderstand me, I said I don't like demos because I've had problems with them in the past," he would say, "You don't buy software, you hate demos, yet you write software reviews. That sounds stupid to me." Of course it would sound stupid to him, he's stupid to the MAX himself, because that wasn't what I said. Instead of helping a customer with a problem with his software and encouraging me to buy the latest version of his software he fired one insult at me after another until I was convinced I should never have bought, opened or installed his software in my computer. I told him I was done with it, to leave it at that. He sent me another message telling me I had better keep my promise, literally threatened me. He's on my mailer's black list now so I won't be getting anymore of his hate mail either.
I certainly do intend to uninstall the software today, burn the patches for the updates to a CD, box it all up and take it to a local game software recycle store and see if they will give me something for it.
I installed the 5.66 update and tried it again. The very first thing that happened was my F-22 started going around in circles on the ground until it flipped upside down and just lay there beside the runway. Same problems with the software in flight constantly tipping over, feeling very unrealistic and unstable. Looking bad, the graphics are awful. Thinking it was just the F-22 model that was the problem I switched to the C-172 and tried again. The very same thing. Bad graphics, I took off, flew around for a bit, the airplane constantly tried to turn upside down on me and I finally landed it. The entire event was completely unrealistic. Like a software driven scenery viewer only much worse. I've tested and reviewed some junk software in my life but anyone who thinks this software is better than MS Flight Sim is not basing their report on overall functionality. Yes X-plane has more types of sims than the older versions of MS Flight Simulator but NO it is no where near as good a program as MS Flight Sim. The next thing you should consider is that no one at MS is likely to insult you if you ask them for help with their software. No one at MS is likely to threaten you either, but Austin did just that to me.
Now for those of you who would like the truth, how about some screen shots?
X-plane's F-22 This is the F-22 after it flipped over and began sliding down the side of the runway. Notice the really bad graphics on the F-22. The sounds are bad to. |
X-plane's C-172 This is a shot of the cheesy control panel of the C-172 version of X-plane. I only wish I had MS Flight Sim 2000 in this computer so I could show you their C-172 panel. |
I would honestly like to post his messages and rude remarks to me on here but I think I'll leave it at that. I have a webpage that posts the general rules of doing business with the public. This guy broke just about every rule on that list. The only one he didn't break was insulting my wife. She said "That guy must have some serious mental and personal problems." And I agree with her and can't help but feel sorry for the guy.
Something you should always remember when it comes to people and companies who have products to market to the public, they pay people to endorse their products, especially if those products are not as good as they say they are. With ISC we were all volunteers. We bought and tested our own software and no one got paid for lying to you about any of these products. I wasn't paid to write this review about this shoddy software. If you like X-plane and you are happy with it and the way Austin treats his customers then I am happy that you're happy. If you've been thinking about buying X-plane and you read this at least now you have my side of the story to consider before you buy.
You might also consider this. I am a pilot myself (Austin says he is too), but I would not use X-plane for any purpose if I were a flight instructor. My brother is a flight instructor and you won't find any version of X-plane anywhere in his flight school. If you ask him though he might very well tell you they do have one or more versions of MS Flight Simulator in the building. I know because I've seen students there who were using it. Of course I must also add that my brother says, "There's no flight simulation program that can take the place of actual pilot time in a real aircraft."
As far as X-plane goes if you have very low standards and like being abused you might like this one. As for those of us who like good software, fun games, good tech support you will most certainly want to stay as far from this one as you can get.
There you go Austin, just as
promised. I should thank you for inspiring me to update this webpage, but
I won't.
Lock On
Review by Bryon Smith
12-19-2004 Update 8-17-2006
I'm working on it. ;-) It has some bugs in it but as far as flight sim games go it has good graphics, and the A-10 and F-15 have a very realistic feeling to them, as far as a computer simulation came go that is. I don't care much at all for the Russian fighters in the game. I wish it had more American fighters for the player to fly. It gives two memory errors every time I close the game out but it doesn't appear to hurt anything. It has a mission builder and a campaign builder. I've been building and testing missions with it and having a ball with it. I will say it has some of the best simulated aerodynamics I've seen in a flight sim game.
In case someone actually does log on and read this review I would like to say that I got the new version of Lock On and it won't work at all! I can't write a review on software that doesn't work. If you buy the older version of Lock On at least it will work. I tried to find a patch for the last version hoping it would fix the problem but apparently there's no patch for it. I removed the software and have not reinstalled it.
Tips: Start off with a fresh defragged drive. If you play the game for very long it will become jerky and that can cause you to crash. Exit the game and restart it.
Now on with the review.
This review has been a long time in the works with all the problems I had starting out with this game. The program locked up frequently. Airplanes blew up all by themselves. Sometimes they taxied into buildings on the ground and blew up. Sometimes they fell out of the air for lack of being able to refuel at a tanker. I’ll list my thoughts and comments on this game in this review.
As many problems as this simulation has had it is still the best F-22 simulation that I have tested. When I first started testing the game and encountering one problem after another I went to the DID web site and saw information there for a patch that was to correct a list of problems as long, if not longer than any other software bug patch that I have ever seen. My first impression at seeing the list was "OH MY, WHAT A MESS OF PROBLEMS." My next thoughts were "AT LEAST THESE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FIX THEM." Still the software should never have been released to the public until it was ready to be released. Far to often this is the case with software developers and especially flight simulation game software developers.
When I test software like this it must prove itself to me to be worth my time and effort in the first hour. If it doesn’t pass the test I simply log it off as not worth the trouble, uninstall it and write a "this isn’t worth your money" review. I could list a few of these games in short order. Nova Logic’s F-22 and F-22 Raptor aren’t worth the time or the money. In fact rank right there with the very worst of all flight simulations that I have seen. The graphics are GREAT, not realistic, but the game itself STINKS. Aerodynamics do not even exist in the Nova Logic F-22 games. It feels more like a graphics viewer than an airplane. The pilots are as "robotic" as any I have ever seen.
Interactive Magic’s F-22 game is not to bad, it kept me interested until I got about half way through the missions and realized just how boring it was. That and the fact that if they ever fire a SAM at you the chances are you can’t avoid it and your game is all but over. With a little practice though and stealth work you can literally sneak up on any target and win without a contest. One thing about IM’s F-22 was the fact you could tell any individual wingman to go after any particular target and they would.
This review however is about the Ocean / DID F-22 simulation. After installing the new patch, which literally installs itself if you are on the Internet at the time. It’s a snap for the web surfers and a pain for anyone else to upgrade their software.
Ghosts may exist in this software and I say that because even
after installing the new patch and being able to run the software after
that point certain strange things happened. During an AWACS training
mission I was wondering why the F-22’s under my command were falling out
of the sky. Some were blowing up on the ground. I clicked on
several of them and if you do that you can watch the target aircraft in
a little view window so you know exactly what it is doing. I watched
them blow up on approach. I watched them blow up when they landed,
I watched them run into buildings and each other and explode. I even
landed one myself to be sure it would be safe but when I landed it and
then jumped back to the AWACS airplane I watched as the airplane I had
just exited from exploded for no reason. There was no threat, it
was setting on the runway and no one else was near it. After testing
this scenario several times and seeing it to be fairly consistent I reported
it to DID Tech team. They sent me a message back asking
me if I was ejecting out of the jets when I left them. I said "NO.."
I was not in fact had jumped in and out of many of the F-22’s as I played
the game. <esc><esc> is the command to return to the AWACS
from your F-22. <Shift><esc><esc> is the command
to eject. Very similar with one exception and that you see your pilot
eject out of the airplane when you use the command to eject. Now
the fun part. The very day I got his message I went and tried to
duplicate the exploding airplanes, even the same airplane and the same
runway. I did everything exactly as I had before but the airplane
didn’t explode. The number of F-22’s that taxied into buildings and
each other also decreased by about half. Still every now and then
if you were watching you could see them run into each other. If they
were going very fast at all they would blow up. If they were going
slow they would pass right though the other aircraft and go on their way.
(1) When viewing airplanes though the MFD in your F-22 sometimes they appear to be flying backwards. Numerous times I saw tankers and other airplanes and knew what direction they were going but they appeared to be moving in the opposite direction. I saw Migs and SU’s take off backwards.
(2) The MAP MFD works fine in the day time but goes dark at night. Tell me does your computer screen go dark when the sun goes down ? NO, and neither should the map MFD in your F-22. How ever they turn down the lights for night flight also turns down the map brightness until the map is no longer usable.
(3) In some air to ground missions the mission objectives are about as vague as they can get. In one mission you are to fly low over a bunch of ships and pick out which ones are friendly and which ones are hostile and then destroy the hostile ones. The only ships that are hostile are the enemy military ships. I think about 4 of the actual target ships were being escorted by enemy military ships. Kill them. But the majority of your targets had no escort and the sea was full of possible targets. Enemy cargo or tanker ships without an escort will not fire on your F-22 and there is no way that I could see to determine which ones were the actual targets. It took me several tries over several days of shooting every ship I came to and then checking the log to see if I had found one of the targets. This is how I finally beat this mission, through the process of elimination. To me this shows a serious deficiency in mission design and briefing. Other air to ground missions were similar. They would say to destroy two office buildings and a smoke stack and they would show you one building and leave you to guess where the other targets were.
(4) Wingmen in this game are as smart as any I have seen in any game. In fact I think perhaps they are the best wingmen I have ever seen in any flight simulation game of this type. Still if they have certain air to ground weapons and you command them to hit a target there is about a 50-50 chance they will attack as you tell them. I have seen them with AGM’s on board flat refuse to attack an enemy target on the ground. The worst of all are the JDAM’s and the GBU’s. They will carry these around during their entire mission and never use them even if commanded to. Only on a few missions did they actually bomb a few of the designated targets and after that I couldn’t command them to attack a target on that location even though they had the correct weapons.
(5) They have GUNS you know, but you can’t get your wingmen to use them against any ground targets. This leaves the player to sometimes attack the ground targets with only their guns. You can imagine the fun of being shot at while trying to destroy a mission objective with only your guns at close range. J
(6) Next to the last mission in the last campaign is an AWACS mission. You are to protect two flights of F-117’s that fly through the battle zone and if you don’t do something about protecting them they will get shot down. I worked away at this mission until I could wipe out every AAA and SAM in the enemy territory. I would totally wipe out two airports to prevent the jets from taking off to kill Ghost 2 flight. Then I would fly along with Ghost 2 only to have them reach a certain point then the waypoints would change and send them to the far bottom left hand side of the map many miles from the actual war zone. This leaves them without the fuel to return to their base. Once they would reach the bottom left hand corner of the map the way-points would change again sending them back to their base. Just as they were on their landing approach at least one of them would crash for lack of fuel. No way to fuel it as I had jumped into another F-22 to keep a close eye on them and I guess my AWACS must have landed so I couldn’t get back to it to tell them to refuel. I tried this several times and in every case ended up having to jump into another F-22 at that moment even just to get them to land and refuel as some of the pilots would refuse to refuel or to land. I judge this is a bug or lack of insight for the programmers of this game. Since I have never been able to complete this mission I finally decided, this game only has a limited number of missions and I was working on the second from the last one so who cares if I remove it and get on with another game to be reviewed.
(7) I actually had to refuel from a burning tanker. I don’t think that’s realistic do you ?
(8) I saw my wingman taxi right through another airplane on its way to take off.
(9) Take-Off auto-pilot mode will get you killed 7 out of 10 times, and every time on certain missions. Sometimes your airplane will just taxi out onto the runway and blow up if the auto pilot is on in take off mode. Sometimes it will reach take off speed and blow up without leaving the ground. Sometimes they deliberately park vehicles in front of you that your auto-pilot will not recognize and you run into those things and boom, you start over. Remember that in reality your take off auto pilot wouldn’t take you to the runway but in this game you can get lost on the airports and not know where to go to find your take off runway. Without the auto-pilot take off mode you are going to have problems. The manual maps of the airports are very vague not showing you what runway is what or what the orientation is for that airport.
(10) Vanishing wingmen have me sometimes baffled because while making a ground attack run against a hand full of ground targets 3 wingmen simply vanished from the game. They were not shot down, they just disappeared. They were there one moment and gone the next without any reason. This has happened to me on other missions and I have no explanation for it. They were right there with me and then they were gone, yet we had not been attacked by anything that could have wiped out 3 wing men in one swoop. I suspect that one airplane did get shot but he didn’t report being hit as they usually do. Then for some reason the program thought they had all been shot down and removed them from the battle.
This is only a few of the things I found wrong with the game. But remember it is still the best F-22 game I have seen and if you ask me if you should get it or not you must be the judge. I would recommend it if you know it has a few problems and limited missions with no real mission builder. It is a very challenging game and in many cases will require you to fly the missions many times to learn how to beat the guy who built the missions. I could give you a few tips on some of the missions, but it is fun to learn these things on your own. It is a game you know.
A word of warning, DID/Ocean games like to overwhelm the player with enemy targets/aircraft. The higher you set your level the more enemy you will encounter. It is not like Janes games where as they increase the ability of your enemy. Even a very bad enemy pilot can shoot you down if you are being shot at by more than you can deal with at any given time and out of missiles. I have had as many as 20 of them after me before they finally shot me down and that was on the low experience settings. I had all ready killed a dozen of them when the next wave hit me. I was all but unarmed and my wingman was all ready gone. The method I found to beat that mission was "stealth". To fly in low, not at the recommended altitude, shoot down the first wave ASAP and then get low and run like crazy in the other direction. When the next wave comes after you if they don’t see you in the expected area they will turn away from the area and leave.
Another thing is they talk about how fast and stealth like this F-22 is yet this game literally allows other airplanes that are much slower to fly as fast as and literally catch you in an all out race. I can tell you that an F-16 can do Mach 2+ and yet this F-22 can only do Mach 1.5 in actual game play. An F-16 can fly 50,000 ft yet this F-22 gets very sluggish at 35,000-40,000 ft.
Aerodynamics are very good in this game. Landing and take-off’s are very realistic feeling. When you land, if you have one wing lower than the other the airplane wants to run sideways with you. It turns in the direction of the wheel that touches first. This is very realistic. Being a pilot myself I can state this for a fact.
Sound effects are also very good. Radio chatter was improved with the new patch they made for it. Before it was so garbled and hard to understand that I could not understand what was being said to me.
The graphics are also very good with several settings for quality. I find the lower settings allow the game to run faster especially around areas of heavy content like around big airports. In fact I am going to say that I like these graphics better than Nova Logic’s Voxel space graphics. Voxel space graphics simply repeat the same things over and over again but the DID / Ocean F-22 graphics are more realistic. You work on a real map with realistic landscapes.
The wingmen aren’t exactly brilliant in this game but they are the smartest I have seen. Many games of this type the wingmen will pick one target to attack and will work on that target until they either kill it or they get shot down. This frequently gets them killed. With this F-22 game though you can’t tell one wing man to do one thing and another one to do something else or attack something different you really don’t need to. You tell them to attack the enemy airplanes and they will go selectively shoot them down. If one of them has fired a missile all ready at a target the others will usually find another target to fire on. If you only have one wingman and a bunch of targets to shoot down he will fire on all of them that are in range and if he misses he will fire on those who were not shot down. He will do this until he runs out of missiles and then will dogfight with guns. Now when it comes to ground targets the wingmen get dumber. It just depends on what the target is and what they have to kill it with. Sometimes they flat out refuse to attack ground based targets even though they have weapons to attack with.
That’s all on this review for now. Time for me to start on Jane’s new F-15 and Nova Logic’s new Comanche Gold.
…Bryon Smith
One Huge Jump above the last F-22 simulation I tried. :-) This game has player options and a few features I have not seen in a game of this type before. Like when you play a campaign it generates not one but several missions to select from during that time slot in the campaign.
This simulated craft does have simulated aerodynamics. It is challenging and fun to play. Only one power up draw back and that is something to do with the video. A text file you have to edit to make the screens appear correctly. I was mad as a cat after fighting with it for about 30 min or so and then finally gave it to my wife to see if she could do something about the problem. She sometimes has more patience with things like that than I do because I have bought so many really shoddy programs over the years and if there is one thing that really gets me going it's buying a brand new $50 program that won't even run when I get it home. She's a programer anyway and found the solution to the problem. I expect I'm not the only one who complained to them about this little hitch in their game. Once we had that solved though I was off into the wild blue hunting for something to blow up. :-) It has a easy and a "realistic" flight mode. Realistic flight mode makes it a brand new "animal" much more challenging but to me much more fun to "fly."
I rate this game a good game and the best F-22 game I have seen.
I may have more on this flight simulation later on.
....by Bryon Smith
I would like you to check out their web site, sign up for Game Center Dispatch and read their reviews. A smart game buyer/player wants to know what they are getting when they spend their hard earned cash on these "pretty" boxes that games come in.
Click on the box and read for yourself. Nova Logic doesn't know how
to make a realistic flight simulation. They have some fun games,
but their F-22 games aren't worth your money. Save it for some good
games.
====
After a horrible
experience with Nova Logic's F-22 Lighting 2 I have no intention of throwing
away any more money on their other Jet type flight simulation games like
F-22 Raptor. It is evident to this game reviewer that Nova Logic
simply has a different and distorted perspective of what a realistic flight
simulation should be. After testing their F-22 Lighting II and comparing
my results with their claims it is evident they intended to mislead the
public/consumer to sell the product on hype rather than on quality.
I gathered the idea from other hype from Nova Logic that their new F-22
Raptor would be another updated version of their F-22 Lighting II which
was a total failure in several areas. They claimed "realistic aerodynamics"
yet it has no simulated aerodynamics at all. It was bug ridden, users
had to download update patches for the game from their web site before
the game would even run, and had the least amount of user support that
I believe I have ever seen in a game. They put all their efforts
into high quality graphics that requires a high end computer to even run
the software product rather than putting any effort into realism and quality
game play for the users. The game itself is nothing more than
an expensive graphics viewer designed to show off their ability to produce
high quality graphics.
Nova Logic does have
other games that are high quality products that I will recommend.
Reviews on their Armored Fist I and II will be
found on the other simulations game page.
You need not be a helicopter pilot to enjoy these games, even my children play the easy missions, but you will need a joystick and sound system if you want to take full advantage of them. I highly recommend these games for their pure fun factor.
When I found this game with a $10 rebate I bought it so that I could do a review on it. It is a fun game, it is bare bones though with no player options to speak of. It is not realistic at all (like they say it is), but is in my opinion a supped up version of Comanche 2 with new missions. It has really good graphics and sound effects. If you can get it for around $30-$37 it's worth the money. Just remember there is no quick mission generator, no real mission builder so when the missions are finished it's a "box" case afterward.
The graphics are so good that when flying around the landscape you might actually get the illusion that it is "realistic" so go ahead and enjoy yourself. :-)
The game does have multi-player modes but in head to head it's just you and the other guy. Very boring head to head play.
So you will know how they treat their customers the old review is below. It will be removed soon. Nova Logic like so many other giant software developers and other giant corporations like to think they are so big and powerful they don't need to listen to their customers anymore. Microsoft itself will sell you something that may destroy your operating system and when you try to get them to help you they want to charge you for it, when it was their software that crashed your system. (IE, MSN etc.)
Update by Bryon Smith 12-19-2004
I hung up my reviewer hat about 5 or so years ago but thanks to one of my big fans out there I've decided to come back and update this page for the benefit of my readers. I can tell you about Comanche 4 in just a few words. It's the best of the entire Comanche series from Nova Logic. It's been good enough that I've kept it on my computer, even bought 2 more copies of it for network play. I build missions for it and give them away on line. You are welcome to them. Here's the link. http://www.dream-link.org/comanche4/comanche_4_missions.htm
I observed the previews of this simulation game product on the Sci-Fi channel today (4-13-1997) and was greatly astonished to see the picture jumping, skipping frames and doing all the things we hate in simulation games. In fact, when my games jump that much I can’t even play them because the actual position of the simulated craft is not where it appears to be on the screen. It makes targeting and maneuvering very difficult. F-22 Lightning does the same thing and I would avoid buying Comanche 3 on these grounds alone. Since it has no real mission builder and not even a quick mission generator I would not waste my money on this game. Save that money and let’s keep an eye on Ocean/DID research for their new TFX 3 and Lucas Arts for their new X-Wing vs Tie Fighter.
The demo of Comanche-3 was available at their web site but has been removed because of bugs found in the graphics area of the program. I believe the new voxel space II graphics is the cause of many of their screen jumping frame rate probelms.
CNET provided an outstanding review on Nova Logic's failed F-22 Lightning II simulation game. The reviewer mentioned several of the same points I had all ready listed in my reviews on the product. He went on to say the game wasn't "..a great game, it wasn't a good game, it was a huge disaster." He basically said the game was a huge disappointment and he could not recommend it. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. The last shot of the Nova Logic F-22 Lightning was it crashing into the ground.
At last we can finally find another game reviewer who can tell the truth about these products. It is evident that Nova Logic doesn't have this man in their pocket as they do so many others.
Some of you may recall that ISC tried to help Nova Logic solve these simulation game drawbacks from the very start but Nova Logic ignored our plea and did what they wanted to do anyway. Their promotion of faulty products and their failing to listen to the gaming public has brought me to the conclusion their games are no longer among the top 10 and can no longer be recommended by this game reviewer. I honestly expect Comanche 3 will become another failed simulation game product. Not because people won't buy it - Nova Logic has cornered the market on advertising hype and could sell horse manure to Blue Ribbon Downs Horse track. F-22 Lightning II sold like hot cakes but when people got it and tried it they soon discovered the same thing this game reviewer learned. It wasn't nearly the game it was cracked up to be. It had to have upgrade and bug patches before many people could even run it. I said, "It needs to be fixed," and they said (basically), "No, it doesn't," and you know none are blinder than they who refuse to see and to accept the fact. All they had to do was fix it and we were there to help advise them, but they refused.
A Warning about their new F-22 Raptor game. I expect it will be a modified version of their all ready failed F-22 Lightning II and (at this point) I can't recommend it either. I say this because many times when a software developer produces a failed product as Nova Logic has with their F-22 Lightning II they will try to recover some of their image and money by giving an old product a face lift. They rename the product and present it as if it was a totally new software product. In reality this method could be compared to giving an old rotten house a new coat of paint to hide the rotten boards underneath.
Save your money people, let's see what Ocean/DID and Lucas Arts are going to do with their new simulation games. And remember, if you want those real mission builders you had better start sending them e-mail and tell them what you want. I thought that me speaking for you as a group would help relieve the load on them and help everyone concerned. I was wrong. You must go ahead and send them your thoughts on these subjects and perhaps if they hear from enough of us they will start to take us seriously.
For a detailed review of this flight simulation game ... F-22 Lightning Review, now updated as of 4/3/97..
This game is the most fun and has the greatest replay-ability of any game I have tested. Like USNF and USMF it also has a real ! It has drag and drop weapons selection showing pictures of the rockets, bombs, guns, fuel tanks, etc. It also has information about the vehicles and aircraft being used in the game and actual videos of the aircraft being used. It has the same easy to remember logical commands, but ATF and Jane's didn't stop there.
In the tradition of US Navy Fighters and USMF the commands and basic program engine is the same, only ATF has many added features that USNF and USMF do not have. Unlike the original USNF, the enemy ground objects such as tanks will actually fight against each other.
ATF has aircraft that are not available in either USNF or USMF flight simulation games. ATF and ATF NATO have multi-player options which give this game a tremendous replay-ability and unlimited options for the game user to create their own missions, swap them with friends and also play them multi-player either through a network, modem or direct connect.
With the addition of ATF NATO it has an enhanced mission builder with 3D view which allows you to place objects from your object list exactly where you want them on the map. It has a moving GPS type map so you can always keep track of right where you are, and where the enemy is if you can detect them. ATF NATO also has the ability to download information from AWACS and other airborn recon units. ATF NATO also has several more options, several more aircraft to choose from and even the ability to fly any aircraft in the game including the top secret SR-X, known as Project Aurora and nicknamed the "Thunder Dart". So you want to punch through the outer atmosphere at blinding speeds leaving your pursuers far behind? You want to fly a top secret aircraft that our government says doesn't exist? You want to take control of the recon aircraft that took the place of the SR-71 back in 1989? Well with ATF NATO you can do just that.
A REAL MISSION BUILDER in this game makes it a snap to create professional missions to play by yourself, swap with a friend, or play multi-player with or against a friend. Try your hand at it and see if you can make missions as good as or better than the people who designed the game. For me it is as much fun to build the missions and test them out as it is to play the ones that came with the game.
MISSION BRIEFING: For the longest time I wanted to create mission briefings for the missions I created, but guess what. I was browsing through the ATF directory the other day and found a text file called Mission.TXT and I read it. It told me just how I could create my own mission briefings, and guess what else, it works just fine. Sometimes you must look for those text files in the dir. I didn't know it was there until recently but I am having a ball making mission briefings for the missions that I have made, and for the new ones I am working on.
This game gets a big two thumbs up and a full 9 on my ratings scale. Easy to install, fun to play over and over again. I may soon add an extensive page just for ATF and ATF NATO. Check our Download area for ATF NATO mission files.
Review by: Bryon Smith
Learning this game is not as hard as you might think because it comes with its own flight instructor. The instructor tells you what to do and describes how to do it. He takes you through a complete (complete as far as the game is concerned) training course teaching you in stages how to play the game and how to "fly" your AH 64D helicopter. He will teach you how to recognize and deal with any threats you may encounter. He will teach you how to use your weapons and what kinds of weapons to use against certain targets.
There are many kinds of missions, you will fly both day and night into enemy territory hunting down your objectives and blowing them to bits. You must watch at every turn for at any moment you never know where a threat will appear, perhaps just over the next ridge or around the next bend. Your eyes keep scanning back and forth between your realistic MFD sensors and your HUD.
As with ATF and ATF NATO it comes with a very complete wire bound instruction guide.
It has Jane's information section telling you more about each vehicle and craft encountered in the game.
It has multi-player features and options. Has an arcade mission mode.
It does not have a real mission builder. The one thing that would have made this game a 10 in the helicopter simulations ratings would have been to have a real mission builder like found in ATF, but it does not have one. There is soon to be an add on disk for this game and I have been asking EA support to tell me if this add on disk will have a real mission builder in it but EA refuses to answer my messages. Perhaps I shall send them directly to Jane's next time. :-)
I have not been able to try the multi-player missions because I don't know anyone else nearby who has the game.
This game gets another two thumbs up and comes highly recommended. I'll post more on this game later on.
Review by: Bryon Smith
Follow Up Note: Just this morning 11/02/96 I was doing some on line research and instead of going to EA to find Jane's, I went to Origin first and then found my way back. Guess what? I found a brand new area for Jane's games that has the real Jane's developers on the web site. Yes, the people who make the games and not the support team that tells us they don't know anything. :-) They are in the process of building one really interesting web site, they have contests for building ATF and ATF NATO missions. They say they are going to have a swap site for game users to exchange their missions with each other. They have AVI videos of an SU 37, which is a highly modified thrust vectoring SU-27 and it can do things that jet airplanes shouldn't be able to do, like stop in mid air and turn around and shoot the guy behind them. Yes, I downloaded their AVI and saw it for myself. You will find some really interesting things at this web site so check it out.
For those of you who are into Jane's information the outfit that gathers the information that is being used in the games, and then some, you might like to try their web site. They have a very long page there with some of the best photos of military equipment, subs, jets, missile launchers, ships, and even anti-helicopter mines. Yes that's what I said and you can see it all at the JANE'S information group web site.
I intend to have a swap site here for the ATF and ATF Nato fans later on but I have not yet figured out how to build it yet. I do have missions however and if someone wants to contact me I will be happy to send them some that I have made.
Yes my friends the long awaited add on to our favorite helicopter simulation is finally been released. I have been checking for it every weekend and last weekend I was pleased to find it, bought it and brought it home to give it a full shake-down run. No matter just how much I do enjoy this game I am going to give you all a fair review including the parts about the game that I do not particularly agree with and the parts that don't work as the manual says they should.
Yes it can install from Windows 95, but in my opinion it is not Windows 95 compatible. Yes it has one of those auto-start up things on the CD and every time you put the CD in your CD ROM reader no matter what you are doing the computer stops and wants to play the game. Personally they could have done well without that feature for me. I find it very annoying especially since the game can't run right from the CD anyway. You must exit the auto-menu, go create a special DOS command in order to run the game effectively. If you try to run it from their menu from Windows 95 the screen updates do not work correctly and neither do the controls. The helio (short for helicopter)is always wanting to tip toward the left forward corner (joystick in the far forward left hand corner). If you try to use the autopilot or auto-hover it will only hover for a few seconds before it noses over to the left. (this is your lower joystick reading to the computer).
So I figured it was back to the old LongBow command and I soon learned it would not work with the new upgrade. In fact the old DOS command I made goes out to get the game and locks up. I have yet to figure out why it locks up though. The install of Flash Point Korea installed a special DOS command that doesn't actually run the game, it is a DOS exit. You use it to get to DOS and then go to the dir where the game is and type in "LB" <enter> and the game will run fine from there. No more falling over nose first to the left, this game was designed to run from DOS and that's all there is to that.
With my new 166 6x86 I am able to run this game in the highest resolution mode without any problems at all. The graphics are smooth and sharp even in turns.
The new landscape for KOREA is much more hilly and really a blast to fly around over but the enemy can hide in many more places and believe me EA/ORIGIN-Janes has given the enemy an attitude. They gave them something else as well, the ability to reincarnate right before your eyes, so don't hang long over an enemy strong-hold even if you have just wiped it out. These guys can re-appear before you can get out of there and boom you are dead. This happens in the Quick Mission Mode but I do not yet know if it does this on the single missions or the campaigns yet as I have only flown a few of them and didn't hang around long enough to find out.
I just spent 5 hours straight in the first real shake down run of Flash Point Korea, in one of the "quick" missions. I got out the manual and started from the front to find out what new features FPK had given the game. New features galore like a second seat. Yes it now has a "front seat" where the gunner and WO does his thing. Simply press the numpad "0" to change seats. In the Weapons Officer position you have access to several more commands. Enough more commands and features it would be hard to include them all in this review. If giving the enemy an attitude and the ability to reincarnate wasn't enough to challenge you there is a "realistic" FCR (Fire Control Radar) mode for the simulation now that really makes the game even more challenging.
You will really think you had it easy before when you could detect enemy targets over 10 miles away, but when you switch all your settings to realistic mode and find out you can only see and target things up to about 8Km and even then there will be targets the MMWR will not detect unless you are in a certain position or altitude that may compromise your own position. Not only that but there are only certain kinds of threats that can be detected with the MMWaveRadar/FCR (Fire Control Radar)(dome radar on top rotor). It will not detect soldiers, who when close enough will also shoot you down. For that you will require the TAD's (Target Acquisition Display System) and visual targeting system.
In realistic mode you can download targets from command or have your wingman bob up and get information and send it over to you. This doesn't work in the Quick Missions though, but in single missions and campaign mode give it a try.
Another feature of the Realistic mode is the ability to use narrow beam radar to select a target for fast updates. This also is said to limit just how many other enemy might be able to detect your radar which would blow your cover. While this might be true in real life I am not sure yet just how well this concept will work in the game. Fast Updates YES, it does that on narrow beam just like it says. Still there is no guarantee that some Hinds won't fly up behind you and shoot you down just the same. :-/ So be ready for anything.
One thing that simply does not work at all is the single sweep mode for the radar in realistic mode. You press the "3" on the numpad to engage this mode, your radar goes off and there is no way to get it back on. If this happens while you are close to the enemy you may find yourself shot down and not be able to fight back. The only way I could get my radar back on again was to go back out to the options, leave it in the custom mode and turn off all the realistic FCR modes. Go back to the game to get them working again and then go back out to Options and turn them back to realistic mode again. I ran like this for awhile and suddenly the radar failed for no reason. I had not pressed the "3" on the numpad but my radar wouldn't come back on. Next thing I knew I was under attack and couldn't do anything about it since I did not have the ability to target anything. Since I was in the invincible mode I know it was not because of radar damage. I do that sometimes when testing programs out. This takes the fun right out of the realistic FCR mode for me. I wonder if they have any update patches for it yet. :-) hehe. brand new game, needs an update patch right out of the box. Where have we heard this before ? Could be worse, at least the game works just fine if you just don't turn on the realistic FCR mode. I know of some games that won't run at all out of the box, and require an update just to get them working again.
I'm not ready to rate this game yet, more testing is required. But I still recommend it to anyone who has and likes AH-64D from the Janes game team.
...Bryon Smith
The EA/Janes/Origin development team has done it again with their Longbow 2. If you like Longbow by Janes you will love Longbow 2. This game has everything the old one had and then some. You get to fly not one but 3 different helicopters, if you want to. Most of the game however is in the Longbow.
Plenty of player options and cheat modes, if you want them. Still no real mission builder but with this game, every time you play a mission something about it will be different. When a campaign is over it is deleted. You can select the same campaign over again and each mission will be different from the last time you played it. I could write a huge review on this game at this time but the page is getting long enough. Let me just say I give this game the highest ratings and recommend it as a real deal. If it says Janes on the box you can't go wrong. The quality of the software at first release is far superior to all others. These games are the most realistic battle helicopter simulation games on the market. As close as you can get to flying a real helicopter in a home computer system.
Now you can read the menu ! :-)
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