TITLE: Allied Force: Why it sucks and why it's awesome AUTHOR: Tom Carrick DATE: 12/11/2005 07:29:00 ip. ----- BODY:

Falcon 4.0: Allied Force. For those of you who don't know it, it's basically a sequel to Falcon 4.0. So, why does it suck, and why is it awesome? Read on, cockmuffins. First, why it sucks. Well, it's very much the same. At first it feels very much how X-COM: Terror From the Deep felt after playing UFO:EU/X-COM:UD. Samey. New graphics, and a different campaign that's virtually identical. Nothing huge has been added. New campaign. That's all. Balkans. It's entirely different from playing the Korean campaign, but it still manages to feel the same. Which is a little boring. You can still only fly the F-16, although you get new (virtually indistinguishable) variants to play with, depending on the campaign and your squadron. The tutorials still suck ass. At least they're fixed now, you don't start with full fuel in the flameout landing training mission, which is nice (it was fixed in a patch of F4, but but still, it was a silly thing to not notice), but you have to read the manual to do the training missions. Okay, this isn't too bad, but when you consider that the manual comes on the CD, so you'd have to print it out, it's a massive pain in the ass. That graphics, while serviacble, are... monotonous. If you fly below cloud level but at a reasonable altitude, and look down, or otherwise face the dirt, you'll notice about 15-20 farms. The *same* farm, that is. It really takes away the element of immersion. This can be somewhat remedied by installing HiTilesAF, but it's not free. Twelve US dollars it costs, which isn't much, but I could get a decent oldish game for that - and the devs should really have done better. The tactical reference is both missing things, and is a little inaccurate in places. Actually, while I'm at it, some planes don't actually have skins yet. It's not too annoying, though, since there's just so many damn planes in the game. So, onto the awesome. The campaigns are still very much dynamic. Your flights can make a difference on the war on the short term, and your general tactics on the long term. Since there's always a big land war going on, this means your flights are usually tank-busting runs, which can get real boring, but you can always leave these up the computer and just pick what you think are the most interesting. You can set the priority targets yourself at any time, and can even choose that the computer makes no flights of any kind, so that you are forced to create every single flight manually. Not for the faint hearted. They've gone hugely overboard with the realism. Yum. The cockpit is now as realistic as it could possibly be, as far as I'm concerned. As well as choosing to start on the runway (or taxiway) and just hit the throttle, you can also choose to start on the ramp, and go through the routine of getting your jet up and running, turning the electrics on, and the engines, avionics, etc., which can easily take 10 minutes. The radar works as it should, and well, most everything does, actually. They've also made it easy enough for idiots to play. If you want, you can have lovely red boxes to show enemy planes and such, without taking much challenge out of the actual combat. Which is nice enough, really. The biggest thing I like about it though, is that the devs aren't just addressing issues with the game, they're adding features, too. For example, in the upcoming patch, you'll be able to do FAC (Forward Air Controller) missions, where you receive radio calls from flights, and designate ground targets from them with smoke rockets and such. Nice. So go out and buy it if you like flying planes and shooting stuff, yeah.

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