The whole idea behind the action flight game has given me pause, even though it worked once - when the original A10 Tank Killer was released, in 1990-91. Why do I hesitate? Well, what's the point of calling something a "flight" game when it might just as well be called a fully-3D first-person shooter?
And that's the question for Silent Thunder - is it just a shooter, and if so, does it compare favorably with other games more purely defined as in that genre? How does Silent Thunder stack up beside Descent II, for instance?
As an action game, Silent Thunder is definitely competitive, but not nearly as exciting to play as any of the horde of games in the genre. When you think of it competing with Hexen, Descent II, the 5,000 titles of this type for the Sony Playstation, even, say, Crusader - the main problem is that not enough happens, fast enough, with enough player ability to dodge and run and hide and shoot, to keep the game at the kinds of adrenaline-pumping levels that are typical for this kind of game. By Hexen standards, in other words, Silent Thunder is positively anemic.
The real point, though, is that the game - like its predecessor -still fills the air combat simulation niche, even though it doesn't aim for the flight performance and weapons and air combat environment accuracy issues that are givens in this niche. Silent Thunder is still an air combat simulation in that the big draw is thinking you're flying a real A-10, with its huge cannon, its panoply of weapons options, its unique mission profile, its unusual performance characteristics. While the game doesn't achieve what veterans would consider accuracy in any of these areas, the overall dynamics of play are sufficiently simulation-like to make it an absorbing play for any flight sim fan, or would-be fan. It's a great starter game for this generation of people new to PC gaming, and is as likely to draw newcomers into the genre of air combat simulation as anything else currently out there.
The appeal of Silent Thunder is less to the would-be serious student of air combat than to a perhaps younger audience more interested in spectacular explosions, and a more cartoon-style approach to the whole idea of air combat (not that the game is in any way visually cartoon-like). The pay-off is not lots of information and history on the A-10, nor on the real-world environments it had its historical role in, but just pure play fun. Sure, there's information on all the weapons, opponents, the A-10 itself anyone would want; but that's not the focus. You just want to get into the game quickly, get shooting, and then get out, with a minimum of fuss. Along these lines, it's perfect.
Silent Thunder comes with three campaigns - including Colombia, the Persian Gulf and Korea - as well as a Training theatre. You can start any of the three campaigns, or choose particular missions from any of the three theatres, as with the original. The campaign missions are linked in that your performance in one sends you down a particular "tree" to the next mission, but each mission starts out from a static beginning point, regardless of your success in other missions. This is again an action-style approach to mission design where - as is the case when you're playing a pure arcade platform or shooter - you come at the same conditions again and again until you've learned your way through the specific problems of that particular "level" - at which point you move on to the next. Nothing wrong with that.
The game also offers appropriate default loadouts for each mission, so you don't have to fiddle endlessly with weapons configurations - or lets you customize your loadout to your heart's content. You can either bypass the loadout screen completely by choosing Fly Now after the mission is offered, or hit OK and then choose a particular loadout configuration, or choose individual weapons for the rest of the afternoon - the choice is yours.
The graphics in Silent Thunder are - to put it simply - amazing. While the terrain area for any particular mission is relatively limited (again, in the same way as the original A-10), and not geographically absolutely accurate (Colombia looks like Colombia, Korea like Korea, and that's enough here), it's incredibly smooth and detailed, with no warping, no separation, and none of that sudden pop-up that often plagues 3D designs. No worries about flying suddenly into a mountain that wasn't there a minute ago. You'll need a P90 minimum to run everything in good detail, but with such a system it looks fantastic; on a P166 with plenty of RAM (16MB) and everything maxed out, you might as well be watching a movie, it's that good. As with a couple of other recent simulation releases (ATF and Top Gun, to be particular), the designers have gone to town on the graphic design of the other objects in the game besides the player. When things explode, you get the best explosion graphics in PC gaming (better than Crusader); and pieces go flying off right and left. Missile trails are impressive. Watch the shadows of your A-10 from an outside view as you get low to the ground. Fly through bridges, canyons, mountain passes - the dimensions all feel right. The fact that the A-10 is a close-to-the-ground plane gives the designers the advantage of being able to design for a 150-400 foot perspective consistently, and suggests that this graphics engine might serve Sierra/Dynamix well for any future ground-based sims they might have in the works (racing, tanks, etc.).
The sound in Silent Thunder is equally high-quality. I would give ST an edge over Top Gun in the air-air and AWACS-air chatter in the credibility department - the flight control officer gives you regular updates (which you have to find first on your map before they'll show up as waypoints in your HUD) during a mission, with different kinds of information (new targets, new objectives, new radar to watch out for, etc.), in a style that remains consistent and plausible whether in single mission or campaign mode. No goofiness here, fortunately.
Most importantly from a flight sim fan's point of view, though, is that the objects (both in the air and on the ground) in Silent Thunder are always in motion. Sure, they always start off from the same generated point when the mission begins, but depending on your timing on your way to target, they'll be in different places. Whether or not you see that gunboat in the river around the mountain bend or directly along a straighter stretch will depend on how much time the gunboat's had to follow it's planned route before you reach it. In this way, the otherwise static missions do change from play to play. Try different ingress routes to see how this kind of timing affects the way a mission plays out.
Similarly, if you manage to achieve your objectives - again, like the original A-10 - one of the rewards (since as an A-10 pilot your role is primarily ground support) is that you get to fly around and watch your ground units achieve their pre-planned mission objectives, once you've cleared the obstacles to same. It's a unique kind of fun - and a lot more engrossing than watching a goofy interlaced movie - to watch your tanks roll into town and take out the enemy's Command HQ after you've broken their ground-air defense and cleared the path for them. Gives you the illusion that you're part of something ongoing, instead of simply blasting static objects to achieve a high score.
Silent Thunder is not without its glitches. It runs entirely under Windows95 only, so you better have that environment optimized for play. Make sure your joystick is registered, drivered-up and fully calibrated and tested prior to installation. If you use Powertoys (a collection of popular Win95 free utilities), turn 'em off before installing or running. Check to see how your video card is doing in the DirectX support area. Even though the game is designed to fit smoothly into a Win95 multi-tasking environment, it still plays best when nothing else is running, when it's installed at maximum (79MB of hard disk...!), and when you're in the right graphics mode (640x480x256 colors) prior to starting it up. It may be my particular configuration, - or perhaps conflict with Microsoft's Intellipoint software (distributed with the MS mouse and MS Natural Keyboard) - but I found my mouse cursor disappearing completely in some configuration screens prior to mission. Similarly, trying to use the DirectDraw Fullscreen option while in 1280x1024x65K graphics mode, weird things happened - switching to 1280x1024x256 colors helped somewhat. Any high-res graphics mode uses more DRAM/VRAM, and risks glitches, I suspect.
In-game, however, Silent Thunder runs consistently smoothly, and is great to play. You may not want to compare the A-10's performance in this game with the latest info from Jane's, but that won't matter once you've spent a few hours with the actual game, enjoying it as a game. Leave it to other products to do the serious sim routine.
