Sometimes
when I'm cleaning my ears I push the Q-tip just a little too far in,
and it hits something that hurts like hell. It kind of hums for a while
and then settles into a dull ache. The thing is, I can experience this
sensation all I want for about a quarter cent per tip, whereas Bethesda
would have me pay upwards of $40 for relatively the same sensation. That
throbbing in the brain, that jabbing pain in the head: That's about what I took away from Bethesda's first attempt at a flight simulation, F-16 Aggressor.
British
flight sims are like the British: They may have one or two good bits,
but it always goes to hell when you get to the teeth. In the case of
British sims, things always go to hell when you get to the controls.
They wind up assigning simple commands like "fire guns" to Alt + Ctrl + ~
and so forth. Let's face it: There has never been a British sim that
was worth a damn out of the box. DID took two years to get EF2000 up to
par, and Total Air War still isn't exactly burnin' 'em up. Rowan seems
to assign controls by having a chicken pick at three successive keys and
binding all three to a common command like "raise flaps." And now we
have GSI, composed of former employees of DID, and their brainchild F-16
Aggressor. Their key assignments aren't as baroque as in other games,
but they've managed to commit the Unholy Trinity of sim no-nos: no key mapping,
no joystick configuration, and, stunningly, no keycard included in the
packaging. It's almost like they want to make your brain hurt.
F-16
Aggressor has puzzling aspirations. The designers actually set out to
re-create Strike Commander. Remember Strike Commander? It was going to
be Origin's flight sim version of the Wing Commander format, a
narrative-driven mercenary flight simulation. Unfortunately, it didn't
turn out quite right. It was incredibly late, pretty buggy, and just not
all that impressive. So of course it makes perfect sense to emulate it.
And then, to really nail the lid down, GSI emulates it badly.
The
real shame of it is there is a fine, fine flight simulator at the core
of Aggressor. GSI has modeled the F-16's flight properties with
commendable detail. The funky handling of the rudders at certain speeds,
tough landings, speed bleeding, and other things related to flight are
all smack on. It's a flight model worthy of the best F-16 sims, poised
to offer the hard-core crowd everything it could demand... until you get
to the systems modeling. These are more on par with a Novalogic game.
The complex instrument modeling of Falcon 4.0 and other true hard-core
sims is only hinted at in Aggressor.
This
is not a problem for a midlevel sim, but Aggressor has pretensions of
hard-core greatness - pretensions that crash to the ground due to
grossly simplified radar controls. A sim has two prime components: the
modeling of the flight of the
plane and the modeling of the systems. On one count, the developers
succeed at realism, and on the other, they fail. In the end, they
scuttle all their good programming by failing to offer any realism or
difficulty switches whatsoever. The flight model is set to its full
realism level at all times. When you have a very realistic flight model,
an unrealistic set of sensors, and no ability to change the complexity
of anything, you have some truly schizoid problems.
Graphically,
while F-16 is quite good, if at times mind-blowing, it's true that
there are better-looking, better-performing sims out there. The terrain
is a bit patchy, but object modeling is good. Cockpits look very good
and have effective dynamic animations for throttle and stick. HUD
overlays and quick-view keys provide excellent perspectives on the
instruments. In another stunning lapse, however, GSI has failed to
include a padlock view. This makes situational awareness well nigh
impossible and deals another serious blow to the sim.
Possibly
the most baffling aspect of F-16 is its alleged "mercenary flight sim"
nature. You would expect to have to fly missions to earn money to pay
for weapons and upkeep on your planes. That was the plan in early specs
for this game, and there are traces of it left. You still fly for money,
but the money is merely used to rate your performance. It has no other
function. As for the "mercenary" element, it's mainly limited to mission
structure and some cursory
background info. Missions range across Africa and include a fair
selection of strike and dogfighting action. Without any in-game mission
statements or target priorities, it's often hard to remember just what
you're supposed to be doing. The quick-start missions allow for some
custom dogfighting configurations, but there's no mission editor. As for
the AI, it's OK, but nothing special. Wingmen (when you have them,
which is rarely) aren't much help, and enemy pilots aren't all that
aggressive. At least Aggressor has multiplayer, which compensates for
these failings only slightly.
Aside
from a very good flight model, there really isn't a lot for which to
recommend F-16 Aggressor. For a company to create a sim with not only no
key mapping, but also no key assignment card, is just mind-blowing.
(You can find the key assignments buried in a 200-page manual.) This
feels like a game that started out really good, with some strong
elements and good design intentions. But then it got delayed over and
over, features were dropped, sections removed, and finally it just
shipped. You know, like most computer games.
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 16MB
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