122 lines
7.6 KiB
Plaintext
122 lines
7.6 KiB
Plaintext
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F-29 RETALIATOR
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The balance between flash and simulation realism is always a tricky one in
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the design of an air combat game; F-29 RETALIATOR clearly moves in the
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direction of flash. Not particularly realistic in terms of either weapons
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usage or aircraft performance, F-29 RETALIATOR nevertheless proves to be an
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amusing, if radically oversimplified, futuristic arcade-style simulation.
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(This review is based on the Amiga version.)
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You begin play at the "Enrolment [sic] Data Bank," where you get a chance to
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choose the level of difficulty. While the manual indicates that the higher
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rank you select, the more missions will be available, I found that the number
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of missions listed always remained the same; the only difference the ranking
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seems to make is in the number of points scored for successful completion of a
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mission. One can enter a name for one's pilot, which, if the uncopyable disk
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is write-enabled, will be stored on disk for future reference. If the pilot is
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killed during a mission, entering a new name starts a new career. The Pilot
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Log cannot be backed up, so like most arcade games, if you get killed
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somewhere along the campaign, you have to start all over again from the
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beginning.
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Once you've enrolled, it's on to the planes, missions and weapons selections
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screens.
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You have a choice between a relatively fictional F-22 or F-29 (the latter
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apparently based on a Grumman design). The planes do perform differently in
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the horizontal, simply in terms of roll-rate; the F-29 rolls faster. Both
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accelerate at completely unbelievable rates, and climbs and dives take nothing
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into account in the way of inertia, drag, or lift. Point the plane up, and it
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goes up; point it down, and it goes down; faster or slower depending on the
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angle of climb or dive, but that's it in the way of flight modeling.
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F-29 RETALIATOR includes 99 missions spread over four different areas of play:
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the Arizona Test Range, the Pacific "Solomos" Islands, the Middle East, and
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Europe. The areas prove progressively difficult, with the European area
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functioning typically as the Final Test for your air combat skills. You can
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begin in any area, but must complete one set of about six to ten missions in
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that area before gaining access to the next set. Success in one area has
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little effect on success in others. In some missions, you can choose from a
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couple of different airfields to take off from; choice is based simply on
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which airfield proves closest to the identified target.
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There are a wide range of armaments, including 5 air-to-air missiles and 4
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air-to-ground missiles. In each category, a few fictional items are included.
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The "Backwinder" is included as a rearward-firing air-to-air weapon, useful
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for the pilot who simply doesn't want to pay much attention to the six o'clock
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position. The AIAAM long-range (130 miles, according to the manual) air-to-air
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missile can supposedly just be fired off if any targets are visible on the
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long-range radar, but it's not possible to target and lock on them, so firing
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off the missile doesn't buy much of a thrill during play (since at long range
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there are usually a host of targets approaching). Some tactics are involved in
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choosing the right air-to-ground missiles for a particular mission, but they
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only amount to consulting the manual to see what kind of missile is likely to
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hit what kind of target, and then to see what kind of targets are available in
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the upcoming mission. This serves more as additional copy protection than as
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anything else in F-29 RETALIATOR. While adding on missiles and extra fuel and
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so on adds up in terms of the weight of the plane calculated in a box in the
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lower right hand corner of the armaments screen, it seems to make little
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difference in the actual performance of either jet (extra fuel does extend the
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range a little bit). The only tangible effect is on the rate of fuel burn,
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which seems more fitting for an M-1 Tank than for a futuristic jet in any
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event, no matter how the plane has been loaded.
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Enrolled, plane, area and mission chosen, weapons loaded up, you finally get
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into the seat of the plane and start off. The preferred interface can be
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chosen on the fly with the press of a key (J for joystick, M for mouse, K for
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keyboard), and can be changed anytime during flight. Joystick control seems
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more digital than analog in the Amiga version, and the steps between responses
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to joystick input are rather few and large. Since there is little in the way
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of control surfaces simulation, the plane flies quite simply, more like
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something in an arcade game than anything else. The keyboard provides slightly
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finer control, but not much.
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Once in the air, you get to witness the main strength of F-29 RETALIATOR, its
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really fast graphics. Large, complex objects are effectively modeled in 3-D
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solid-fill, with an unusually large number of surfaces represented for each
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object. When approaching things like SAM sites, trucks, or tanks, enemy ground
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targets are often animated as well as nicely drawn. The tanks go scurrying
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around at blazing speeds in the desert, for instance, and the trucks roll
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along in a well-formed convoy on the road.
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Unfortunately, not very many objects are represented onscreen at a time, and
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they have a rather unpleasant tendency to "pop" into appearance at the last
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moment upon approach (sometimes one can detect an object as a moving black dot
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in the distance, but there are no intermediary steps between that
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representation and the full-scale 3-D drawing and animation). This is
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particularly disconcerting with stable ground targets (and one's airfield), as
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it becomes difficult to determine one's approach with any accuracy based on
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visual sighting, and radar targeting is extremely limited in the design (there
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is none for ground attacks).
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Sound effects are rather limited, unfortunately. There is a single sound
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sample for all explosions and missile launches, and while they're both at
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least somewhat appropriate, they prove rather irritatingly repetitive after a
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brief amount of play. The reputed various warning tones aren't all fully
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installed in the design, which doesn't matter much, as they usually occur only
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brief microseconds before a hit upon your plane occurs, leaving little time to
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initiate countermeasures. Missile locks are easily broken with one push of the
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flare or chaff key, though, and one simple sharp turn will also sometimes
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break a missile's lock.
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F-29 RETALIATOR comes on one, uncopyable disk, and must be write-enabled to
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save pilot and progress information. Only one pilot log is allowed on the disk
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at a time. The game will play on all A1000s, A500s, and A2000s, and requires
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only 512K of RAM to run. Mouse, keyboard, and joystick interfaces are
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supported. No hard disk installation is possible.
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All in all, F-29 RETALIATOR remains pretty much a disappointment. Apparently
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enough improvements in the IBM version have been included to give the game a
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little more play value (a head-to-head option allows one to skip eighty
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percent of the design and just concentrate on shooting a friend out of the
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skies), and some of the limitations of the flight model have been addressed.
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The original F-29 RETALIATOR released about a year and a half ago in the UK was
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notoriously buggy on both the Amiga and ST, and the US release has the decided
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advantage of being relatively bug-free. But other than that, there's not a lot
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to recommend F-29 RETALIATOR, unless you're an arcade game enthusiast with no
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patience for the more complex air combat simulations.
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F-29 RETALIATOR is published and distributed by Ocean Software.
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