F-16: Aggressor
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
Strike Commander returns
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At first glance, the game appears to be a clear-cut "sim-lite" product along the lines of Origin's classic 1993 Strike Commander. You assume the role of a mercenary pilot tasked with fighting rebel forces in four separate African theaters (Madagascar, Ethiopia, Morocco, and the Rift Valley) and--as in Strike Commander--your only motivation is cold, hard cash.
In keeping with Aggressor's arcade-style storyline, each of its 10-mission campaigns is a hard-scripted affair that requires successful results in each sortie before you can move to the next. Unlike the Origin game, however, there are no resource- or base-management elements to keep you occupied between missions, and no clever cinematics to bind the story together. You earn a few hundred grand and move on. These plot limitations might be easier to accept if Aggressor had managed to live up to the hyping of its flight model. Statements from publisher Virgin and U.S. distributor Bethesda touting "flight modeling so accurate that certain military-only secret features had to be removed" create the mistaken impression that high-end sims like Falcon 4.0 and Jane's F-15 are in for some serious competition.
But although Aggressor offers solid simulations of G-bleeding, roll sensitivity, and GLOC-induced blackouts/redouts, it misses the mark in many other critical areas. The game's F-16 is all but impossible to stall (even when its forward velocity drops below 100 knots) and its airspeed and turn performance are completely unaffected by weight and drag. The flight-model fidelity and AI difficulty aren't scalable from the game's options menu, and the avionics are equally simplistic.
This dumbing down seems calculated to make the game more accessible to the casual pilot. Veteran sim fans aren't likely to be impressed, and the game's 55-page manual (compared to the 200 to 300 pages for a serious sim), five-mission tutorial, and lack of any keyboard-mapping options will reduce their interest even further. Redeeming value may be found in the game's co-op and deathmatch Internet play, but probably not enough to put the game on anyone's must-play list.
On a positive note, Aggressor's graphics are appealing when the right video card is used. Although the game's D3D-enhanced visuals were coarse and choppy when I ran them through my Rage Pro Turbo AGP card, they looked great when I ran the game on a Voodoo card under D3D. The terrain and aircraft texturing are both first-rate, and--apart from some cheesy "toothpaste tube" missile trails--the special effects and pyrotechnics are similarly impressive. A virtual-cockpit view complete with legible instrumentation is another nice touch, but the inexcusable lack of an enemy-tracking "padlock" view compromises any sense of situational awareness.
F-16 Aggressor offers little in the way of groundbreaking gameplay for either casual or hardcore sim fans to sink their respective teeth into. The incomplete flight model and scripted campaigns won't grab serious fliers, and the game's uninspired storyline and lack of flash make it just a poor imitation of Strike Commander. This middle-of-the-road approach may not offend most sim fans, but it probably won't inspire anyone either.
