Jane's F/A-18 Review

EA surprised us pleasantly with their newest flight simulation F/A-18. It comes as true refreshment after Flanker 2.0, which proved to be a too early edition of a non-optimized and extremely demanding simulation --- a disappointment to players and a provocation to reviewers (look up the reviews on the web and see for yourself). Fortunately, EA is a team of experienced programmers and marketing experts who are men (and women) of action, rather than words. It's pretty hard therefore, for us to feel disappointed after playing the final products of their hard labor; in this case, F/A-18 Hornet. EA's flight sims don't need fancy PR introductions; once you load up the game, the quality of the gameplay speaks for itself.

F/A-18 is the commercial title for a simulation in which you will fly an F-18/E Super Hornet, an up-to-date version F-18 Hornet, increasingly frequent in the US NAVY as a deck hunter and assault fighter.

Lone Ranger rides again!

Attacking a boat...

Before you take off, I would recommend you to set up the game configuration. First comes the level of realism (where you can adjust reality levels of almost anything - from the reaction of flight controls, to plane's/system total energy and drag/weight ratio). Then come the common graphics options  (dependant of your video adapter) control and sound settings. Here I will turn your attention towards the complexity of numerous commands. I would not suggest you to re-map the keyboard commands. Try to learn the defaults first. I myself rewrote all 120 (!) commands, then picked out the most useful ones and found out there was about 40 of them. After acquiring some basic ideas on how to take off in your Super Hornet go through all the training missions and do not hesitate to fly them several times, especially when they are about weapon and radar usage. The concept of training missions is very good, there is no time wasting, you just practice what you will need in the game. On the other hand, I do have two serious objections:

When choosing a mission the briefing screen is being loaded twice. This is a redundant time and memory resource waist. Unfortunately this will keep happening whichever mode of play you choose (Training, Campaign, Single Mission, Instant Action).

The second objection has to do with the advice I gave you earlier: if you have not learned all the commands you will have quite a hard time flying because your flight instructor who leads you through the training missions takes it for granted that you know things that are less than intuitive...

If you wish to practice some more before the campaign, be sure to fly through a couple of Single Missions. You will find yourself "in the middle of things" - in a great position to test your Hornet in a real combat, still practicing routines that will save your hide when the going gets tough.

The real story about Super Hornet actually starts with the first campaign: In economically ruined Russia, a group of militant rebels arm themselves posing as a threat to peace in the region.  As the story unfolds into a civil war you will fly your Hornet through missions escalating from simple radars acquisition surveillance mission to full-scale air war. You can choose one of the four points in history when you want to enter the war, or you can start a long and arduous campaign through the whole war. Before every mission you can adjust your "luggage" or just take off with the default weaponry. The process of tracking and destroying enemies is pretty realistic, but you will also have all the modern electronic and passive (decoys) countermeasures at hand. Learn to use these devices properly, and it is advisable to check before every mission which of these devices is at disposal. It is often far better to have one jammer instead of two AMRAAMs (they take up the same amount of space).

For those of you less familiar with given weapons there is an interactive encyclopedia that you can browse while preparing for the missions. The encyclopedia has 3D animated models of weapons and devices with all the important (and some unimportant) data, which might come in hand when you are sent on a mission with a hieroglyphical weapon statistics on your Head Down Display... As for the realism concerning the plain's response to commands and in-flight behavior I have to say that it is average, but I do not intend to explain that statement because it would take up much more space than I can afford in a game review.

There is a lot more to be said about this simulation. First, it was developed in accord with valid experiences from their last successful simulation F-15, and can even be considered its descendant that surpasses its predecessor. The graphics are absolutely great with one reproach: the screen gamma is too dark so that the details on sea and land are barely visible, thus rendering all attacks on surface targets somewhat confusing. I played the game on both TNT2 and ATI Expert@Play and in both cases the gamma was way too dark. Screen and adapter adjustment did not produce much effect. The AI of both opposing and allied forces can be set to some common values (Rookie, Expert, Ace, Veteran, Random). There is a particularly interesting option called - Cheats. It lets you unlock some less standard options like Navigation/Targeting Clues, Aircraft labels, Invulnerability, etc. The mission editor is very complex, and you will have to know what you are doing all too well if you plan on creating good missions. Here you will find 34 Russian crafts, some of which will leave you speechless. Like in all good simulations here you can also edit your own squadron, callsign, squadron emblem and experience of your pilots. I also have to mention the perfectly done sound. The radio communication sounds pretty good, the noise both in cockpit and outside and sounds of electric jamming are very realistic, just like the overload of radio communications during a takeoff of a whole squadron from the carrier.

Finally, a word about the multiplayer mode. It allows you to connect to other "pilots" over the serial link, TCP/IP, IPX or a modem connection. I had no chance to test this, so all I can say is that the stated requirement for multiplaying is at least 28,8Kbps preferably 56Kbps (or better).

For all references or possible patches (my machine crashed several times) go to www.janes.ea.com, the official site of the publisher - famous "Jane's" (Jane's USAF, Jane's IAF, Jane's F-15, Jane's Fleet Command...).

This is altogether a very good simulation, which appeared just in time to satisfy the players disappointed by Flanker 2.0. The game also has a strategic aspect, so you can count on spending whole days in front of your computer trying out the most convenient moments for attack or defense. The hardware requirements are far from being irrational. The configuration and multiplayer options could hardly be better. Besides these good sides the game does have flaws. The dark gamma will obstruct your targeting ground/sea targets, the details in cockpit are barely legible in higher resolutions, the command response is not too realistic even though the energy has been calculated precisely, and it does require long acclimation because of very complex and unintuitive commands.