Fresh Fish 8/FreshFishVol8-CD1.bin/useful/reviews/software/games/birdsofprey

Internet Message Format | 1992-05-06 | 26KB

From: Steve Koren <[e-mail]>
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Jason L. Tibbitts III
Phase-Of-Moon: the moon is waning crescent (13% illuminated)
Subject: REVIEW: Birds Of Prey
Keywords: game, flight simulation, commercial
Path: menudo.uh.edu
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games
Reply-To: Steve Koren <[e-mail]>
--text follows this line--
This is a review of Birds of Prey, a new flight simulator from Argonaut
Software and marketed by Electronic Arts.  BOP does a lot of things very
well, and a few things not so well.  BOP is available from:

     Electronic Arts
     Langley Business Centre
     11/49 Station Rd, Langley
     Berks, SL3 8YN
     England
     (0753) 49442

Birds of Prey is HD installable and will run under AmigaDos 1.3 or 2.04 on
any CPU.  It requires a minimum of one megabyte of ram.  It has manual
lookup copy protection, but it is fast and relatively unobtrusive.  An
MS-DOS version is in the works and is scheduled for early '92.  Prices
vary, but are generally in the $35 to $50 range.


Initial Impressions
-------------------

My first impression of BOP was not favorable.  Luckily, this changed later
on.  First of all, BOP comes on two disks.  One is chiefly consumed with
holding the introductory animation, which is quite nice.  After installing
BOP on my hard disk, it would not run.  A little bit of fiddling
determined that BOP did not like a program I run upon startup which copies
the system stack to high speed 32 bit ram instead of slower 16 bit ram.
No other software which I have yet encountered, either commercial of
public domain, has had a problem with this.  After commenting out that
line from my startup-sequence, BOP invoked properly.

The next problem was the manual based copy protection.  The game will ask
you for statistics on various aircraft, and the manual is careful to warn
you to type these in exactly, using the same decimals, spaces, etc.  So I
typed in "3245 kg" without realizing that you are not supposed to type in
the UNITS, only the number.  This caused me no end of grief, since the
game would not let me past this point.  Eventually I thought to try it
without the units, and it worked.  Once you figure this out, the copy
protection is not annoying.

The Game
--------

BOP lets you fly 40 different types of aircraft on various missions.
These range from the best modern high-tech fighters in the world, such as
the F-16, F-15, and Mig 29, to older combat aircraft, such as the F-104
Starfighter, to cargo planes and tankers (C-130, KC-10), reconnesance
aircraft (SR-71, U-2), experimental aircraft (X-15), stealth aircraft
(F-117, B-2), and bombers (B-52, B-1, F-111).  This is but a small subset
of those available.  You can fly NATO (both American and European) or
Warsaw Pact aircraft, based on land or carrier, fixed or variable wing,
and many other types (I haven't even mentioned most of the Soviet
aircraft).  Exploring the different aircraft is lots of fun.  Absent are
the ultra-new fighters (F-22 and F-23), and older piston engine planes
(P-51 Mustang, B-17, etc).  There are a few prop planes, but this is
primarily a jet simulator.

There are currently 12 missions available to fly.  When you pick a
mission, BOP will rule out some aircraft right away (for example, you
can't use an F-15 from a carrier, or fly troop drop missions in an F-4).
Other than that, it lets you pick from a fairly large list of applicable
aircraft, and makes no attempt to influence your choice.  It is possible
to pick an aircraft only marginally suited for the job at hand.  For
example, I once tried to fly fighter escort for a B-1 bomber in a F-5
Tiger II.  The F-5 is a fairly lightweight plane, slow unless under full
afterburner, and it had troubles keeping up with the B-1.  Part of the fun
of the game is selecting the right aircraft for the job - you need to pick
one which is capable of using the type of weapons you need.

Once you pick the mission and aircraft type, you can pick the armament to
carry.  This is one of the most well done aspects of the game.  A view of
each aircraft is displayed along with the exact hardpoint configuration of
that plane.  (A hardpoint is a location on the aircraft to which bombs,
missiles, fuel tanks, and other useful gadgets can be attached).  You see
a list of possible weapons which this plane can use.  This list differs
for each aircraft type.  Sometimes, a particular weapon will only work
with one type of aircraft.  (The Pheonix missile, for example, can only be
attached to an F-14A Tomcat).  You can attach a weapon to a hardpoint by
dragging its icon over the hardpoint and clicking the mouse button.  You
can remove things from hardpoints and reconfigure the aircraft just as
easily.  This lets you pick what you think is the optimal set of weapons
to take on each mission based on the type of mission, distance, expected
threat, and weight of the armament.  The only potential problem with this
aspect of the game is that a flight simulator novice might be intimidated
by the range of choices available, since there is no default or
recommended configuration.  You could even fly unarmed if you so wished.
If the aircraft you want to fly cannot lift the weapons you want, you can
reduce the internal fuel supply and meet up with a tanker once airborn.

Once you select your weapons and read the mission description posted to
the screen, you have committed to fly the mission.  You start out sitting
in the aircraft in the hanger or carrier.  You start up the engines, taxi
out on the runway, and stop.  Proper takeoff procedure is to apply wheel
brakes, set flaps to 15 to 20%, throttle up to 100% power, and release the
wheel brakes to begin the takeoff roll.  This procedure is necessary with
some aircraft, because even though you have increased the throttle control
to 100%, the engines may take a while to ramp up to that power level.  It
doesn't matter for powerful fighters, but if the aircraft has a long
takeoff roll or is heavily laden, it is important.  This is an example of
the sort of small thing that adds realism to the game, which is often
missing in other flight simulators.

After you air airborn, you can put the gear up and relax for a bit before
you get into enemy territory.  This is where the autopilot comes in handy.
In BOP, distances and times all match real life.  This means, for example,
that if your target is 600 km away, you might have a 45 to 65 minute
flight to even get close.  (That is 45 to 64 minutes of _real_ time as
well as game time). It might also be necessary to refuel en route - more
on this later.  In any case, since this time is spent just cruising along
happily, the autopilot can be used to "compress" time.  The autopilot is
well done.  You can select a waypoint and tell it a cruising altitude.
You are then treated to a nice outside view of your aircraft flying past,
and a few seconds of real time later, you have arrived.  The autopilot
will disengage en route if any threat is detected.  Also, you probably
don't want to arrive actually AT the waypoint, if that is what you are
trying to attack.  Rather, you can tell the autopilot to disengage at any
distance from the target (such as 60 km, to give you time to get your
bearings, arm weapons, get into the right HUD mode, etc., before the
attack).  Once you arrive, the autopilot dumps you off in straight and
level flight at your indicated location and altitude.

The method of attacking the target differs greatly depending on the target
and weapon types.  At the easiest, it involves simply selecting a target
and launching a fire-and-forget weapon.  At the most difficult, it
involves using "dumb" weapons, aiming modes on the HUD (Heads Up Display),
etc.  The HUD has roughly 5 or 6 modes available for various things,
including navigation, various types of weapon assistance, landing, ground
attack, etc.  Various types of radar are also available for specific
tasks.  Some aircraft are also equipped with internal cameras (SR-71, U-2)
or internal bomb loads (B-52, F-111, etc).  After flying a ground attack
mission in an F-15, you might make a