Review: Chuck Yeager's Air Combat by Christopher A. Myrick Type: Combat Flight Simulator Publisher: Electronic Arts (800/245-4525) Retail Price: $59.99 Mail Order: $45.00 Requires: System 6.0.7 or later, hard drive, at least 2 MB of RAM. Protection: Manual based   There are five ways you can get into the air using Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat (CYAC), the newest flight simulator on the Mac. You can fly any one of the six aircraft against a variety of aircraft ranging from fast piston-engined fighters to lumbering (but still fast) jet bombers. The aircraft you can fly are the North American P-51 Mustang, Focke-Wulf 190, F-86 Sabre, MiG-15 Fagot, F-4 Phantom II, or the MiG-21 Fishbed. A Game Full of Options. In Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat you can choose among five different scenarios. You can fly a campaign in WWII as a German or American pilot, in Korea as an American (or UN) or North Korean (or communist) pilot, or in Vietnam as an American or North Vietnamese pilot. Flying a campaign gives you a fixed set of missions that must be completed in order to advance to the next mission and, if you live long enough, to complete the campaign. Some campaign missions are pretty easy, but others are fairly tough, even against the lesser-skilled pilots. You can also fly an historic mission in either WWII (European theater), Korea, or Vietnam for either side. Each theater of operations has a number of missions you can choose and fly in any order against pilots of four different skill levels. Since these are the same missions as the ones in the campaign, this is a good way to “practice” a mission before risking a campaign pilot. CYAC also lets you create your own mission. Controlling variables such as the number of opposing aircraft (up to 15), the number of different types of opposing aircraft (maximum of three), starting altitude (from 2,500’ to 40,000’), and the opening move of the engagement you can take on the aircraft of choice in one of the six planes previously listed. This is a really neat option because you can finally see if you really can down a MiG-21 with your P-51 or just how much havoc you could wreak on 15 B-17s using an F-4 Phantom II. You can fly against pilots of four different skill levels and can have an awful lot of fun doing so.   You can also play CYAC head to head combat over a network. I feel that this is CYAC’s best feature and one that EA doesn’t emphasize enough. Once again you have your choice of the six fighter planes, and you and your single opponent can choose whatever planes you’d like. Variables such as altitude, range, and how you encounter each other can all be modified to suit the combatants. Now some people might remember that while some Mac flight simulators had decent performance over local area networks, their performance over modems left a lot to be desired. This is not the case with Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat. Using AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA) to set up AppleTalk networks over long distances, you can challenge people anywhere they have a phone, a Mac, and (legal) copies of ARA and CYAC. As an added bonus you get good performance, even with slow speed modems (2400 baud), and with high speed modems the performance is excellent. I just wish EA had mentioned ARA in the manual, because it makes an excellent companion to their game. Finally, you can test fly one of the six available aircraft. If you are tired of checking six or just want to see how far you can push the envelope and still get away with it, then you can select the test flight option and put the planes through their paces. It is also a good option to use if you need to practice a maneuver without the added distraction of having some certified professional killer trying to fill you and your fighter plane with holes. In the Cockpit. The first thing you’ll notice once you get CYAC going is that it has great view keys, including up and down views (great for engaging in ACM), and all the neat chase planes, enemy and missile views. You can also move you “head” and look in any direction until you reach some opaque object, like your plane, that won’t let you see any further. While checking out the various views you’ll also notice that CYAC has smooth but detailed 8-bit (256 color) graphics, a fact you’ll appreciate when you’re surrounded by similar looking aircraft, some friendly, some not. The terrain is not as exciting as the aircraft but since the focus of CYAC is almost exclusively air combat, there’s no need to have a pretty ground. The only drawback to high detail is in reduced performance so CYAC does give you the option to select as much detail as your CPU can handle and still give the performance you want. I’ve found that my lowly IIci (25 MHz 68030) can still crank out acceptable frame rates at high levels of detail. The aircraft controls in CYAC are the usual set, minus the rudder! Why the rudder was omitted remains a mystery but apparently the original PC version of CYAC also lacked rudders so perhaps this feature is an artifact. You’ll miss the rudders if you fly via keyboard but if you use a mouse or a joystick, it is easy to compensate for the rudders. Still, it would be nice to have them, and perhaps a future version of CYAC will add rudders to the game. Each of the six available aircraft has a unique cockpit layout, but the first thing you notice is that none of the instruments have numbers or letters on them. To be fair to EA, the characters would probably be too small to read, even on a 13” screen. However a pilot still needs to know how fast he’s going and how high he is (and other information pertinent to his survival) so EA included a Heads Up Display (HUD) with all 6 aircraft. Purists may scream that HUDs are a recent innovation and have no place in WWII or Korean era aircraft, but using a HUD allows you to focus on the job at hand — downing aircraft — and not spend time squinting at instruments. Many Mac game enthusiasts have come to expect high quality sounds from their games, given the Mac’s sound capabilities. Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat falls short in this regard (as did Hellcats and Red Baron) as some of the sounds are not as realistic as they could be. The sounds are distinctive enough to allow you to tell when your plane is being hit by gunfire or when your afterburner is working so they are definitely functional. EA could definitely improve the sound quality in a future CYAC release, but as they stand they do not affect the game play, they only affect the aesthetics. (For those of you comfortable with ResEdit, a number of folks have uploaded replacement sounds on AOL and other networks.) In Flight. Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat does a good job of modeling the flight characteristics of all the aircraft. You can stall all the planes, get stuck in flat spins and find other neat ways to damage your airframe, including ripping the wings off if you go too fast. Your opponent’s skill level runs from Easy to Normal to Good to Expert. As was previously mentioned, CYAC has smooth graphics and animation that results in a “seat of the pants” flying experience. I freely admit to leaning from side to side and ducking while flying as I pursue or am pursued by enemy aircraft. CYAC is at least as smooth as any other flight simulator currently available for the Mac, and on faster machines it is even more riveting. Debriefing. Yet another outstanding feature of Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat is the mission film. You can record your whole mission and then play it back from any of the available camera angles (the same as the views). You can save the film for posterity either in its native CYAC format, which requires less than 50k per film, or you can create a QuickTime movie (but make sure you have a few free megabytes before you do). It is very nice to be able to go back and repeatedly watch a skilled maneuver or a particularly gruesome salvo. What It All Means. Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat is an ACM simulation where ground attack plays a minimal role. The main object of the game is to shoot down other aircraft and to avoid being shot down by them. CYAC offers unparalleled flexibility in that you can fly in one of three theaters against a number of aircraft, or you can mix and match to create your dream mission or your Mission from Hell. Additionally, CYAC is an excellent program to use to settle disputes of air superiority between friends because of its under-emphasized network capabilities. Although rudders are lacking and the sound is not the best, CYAC is very playable and is the best air combat simulation on the market. Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat represents an excellent buy for both the hardcore flight simulator enthusiast and the casual Mac game player. Pros • Beautiful 3-D graphics • Great dogfighting • Best port I've ever seen • Great replay feature • Head-to-Head is a ton of fun Cons • Maximum 13" screen size • Hard to control without a MouseStick II or MacFly