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Great pair of sims

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

To cut it down, in F-22, you fly the F-22, the next generation of American superfighter - a twin engine, super-cruising wonder. The EF2000 is built by a consortium of European companies (excluding the French who built the Rafale). EF2000 is smaller and lighter, though not as overpowered, heavily armed or as stealthy as the American plane. Both planes "super-cruise" (fly supersonic without setting their engines on "afterburner" or - as real EF2000 drivers would say, "Reheat".) and rely on next generation sensors. In each, you can shut down your radar (which is better at revealibg your position than detecting the enemy) and rely on a data link from an AWACS (An American "Sentry" in either USAF or RAF livery; I've yet to see a "Nimrod"), but you'll end getting shot at nonetheless. While neither of these sims will ever make it to the "hardcore" category owned by flight sims like "Flanker 2.0", "Falcon 4.0" or "Jane's F/A-18", each of F-22 and EF2000 offer more fluid and convincing flight dynamics than arcade-like sims like those by Novalogic ("F-16:MRF" as well as Novalogic's own F-22 sims) or survey sims like those of the "Jane's Fighters" series. (The challenge of flight is more pronounced on EF2000 - that plane has high angle-of-attack performance, but is comparably underpowered next to F-22; in aerodynamics terms, that allows its greener pilots to get into a jam as often as similarly ham-handed F-22 drivers, but slimmer opportunities to get out of one). Although both planes have gobs more power than even the
F-16 (the plane you're most likely to have flown if you've ever flown a flight sim), DiD manages to stick in details that remidn you that you're strapped to a heavy and high-powered hunk of metal. (When you taxi, your airplane lopes on its oleo struts like a raft on a choppy river). Both planes have highly detailed flight panels built around several multi-function displays. I preferred the EF2000 flight panel which was more crowded. (I figure, if it's more complicated, it's probably more realistic; also, the guys who developed the F-22 panel don't really do anything with all of the extra "space" they've created, and they simply just have the same buttons on each of the same MFDs - mostly those dealing with F-22's "auto-EMCON" feature.) Sound affects distinguish the nationality of each plane ("Weakest Link" MC Anne Robinson's sexier clone is the voice of the EF2000 flight computer; an appropriately American voice warns you when somebody has locked radars on you). AI seems spotty in F-22 (I tore into a squadron of Su-27 Flankers that remained in rock-hard formation, even when some of their number began to shred and burn; some unmaneauverable MiG-27 and Su-25 fighter-bombers showed much more agressive skills), but the enemy of EF2000 appeared uniformly muderous in their proficiency - a reminder of the guys who made life miserable in the original EF2000. A lot about EF2000 v2 is reminescent of the original - though the new game offers support for hardware acceleration and both run under Win 95 and higher. (The older game came on the cusp of win95, but remained playable only in DOS). My Savage 4 card wasn't supported, making the game look little better than an upgrade of the original EF2000, but it was worth it to fly the F-22 using the flight-sim engine from that game, which had always been a favorite.

Some caveats - if you've already got the original EF2000, I'd recommend that you forego the new game and get "Total Air War" - an expanded version of F-22 using a fully dynamic campaign generator. Also, I was a bit dissappointed by the rudimentary cockpit on "F-22", having already seen the "click-able" cockpit on the otherwise inferior "iF-22". I ran this game on my P4 with few problems, and none involving WinXP compatibility.

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