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Review of Air Warrior II, Stand-Alone
Summary
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In the stand-alone part of AW you can fly training rides, single missions, campaigns (only in Europe) or get dropped into instant action. You can choose from over 40 different aircraft of which 5 are heavies, all with different flight characteristics. Surprisingly, you can also choose from 4 ground vehicles. You can choose to fly in 4 different arenas: Europe, the Pacific, WW 1 and Korea.
The enemy Artificial Intelligence is awesome: you no longer have an enemy plane just sitting and waiting to be shot down (unless he is in a bomber of course). He will use every trick in the book and if you’re not careful you get shot down very quickly.
The graphics are slightly disappointing because if you wish to see all instruments, you have to accept that only about half of the screen area is used for looking out the window. The scenery is also somewhat disappointing: it looks like an enhanced "Their finest hour: Battle of Britain"
If you crave action and real opposition, this is a good flightsim to buy. If you want detailed scenery to fly around in and good graphics, go for something else.
Game Contents
Planes
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There is a surprising amount of different planes available in each WWII war arena: 15-20 allied fighters, fighter/bombers, heavy bombers and a transport and 5- 12 axis fighters and bombers. The planes include such famous names as the Spitfire, the P38 Lightning, the B17 Flying Fortress, the P51 Mustang and the worlds first jet fighter, the ME 262. In the WWI arenas there are 2-3 planes on each side including the Red Barons Fokker DVII and the Sopwith Camel. From the Korean war arena comes the MIG 15 and the F86.
All the planes exhibit more or less different flight characteristics. The P38 and the Spitfire are my personal favourites for their combination of agility, horsepower and sheer firepower. The WWI planes are fun to try, but too fragile if you are used to the more modern planes.
As a curious and fun addition to the planes are a tank, a truck, a jeep and an AA-gun. These are supposedly most useful in the multiplayer environment.
Training
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You can choose to go for a check ride in any of the available planes. This also includes a summary of the plane characteristics. You can only choose a plane that was available to the side you have chosen (only German planes for Germans and so on). In the multiplayer mode you can choose any plane you like, although it may be a bad idea to choose, say, a C-47 transport in a "target rich"-environment.
Operational Theatres
As mentioned there are 4 available scenarios: Europe, the Pacific, World War 1 and the Korean war. In these arenas there are up to 25 missions in each, starting from the very basic taking off to very advanced multiplane missions with P-47’s, B17’s and lots of enemies.
The actual look and feel of the scenery was not the top priority of this sim. The general idea is to have a landscape which will give you an impression of flying over something, but don’t waste your time looking at it. This game is about dogfighting and nothing else.
You cannot save a partially completed mission.
Campaigns
In Europe (and maybe elsewhere in add-ons?) you can choose to enter 1 of 3 campaigns; a series of missions with a larger strategic goal. And yes, you can save a partially completed campaign. The missions in the campaign range from a realistically eventless patrol without any action to a nerve-splitting air-raids on your home airfield.
Gameplay
Cockpit
The cockpit construction of all the craft is probably what has annoyed me the most with this simulator.
There are three basic views: one with a small screen and all the instrument and the radio interface present, one full screen looking-out-the-window-mode only the most essential instruments and no radio interface present and a view in between the two.
If you want to see all instruments, you have to contend with looking out through an area about half the size of the screen. If you want to use the entire screen for looking out, you can no longer give orders to your wingmen or get information about enemy planes. In order to see something in the 10-11 o’clock position or the 2-3 o’ clock position you simply have to turn the airplane accordingly. Forward, backwards, left, right, up and down is what you get.
To give orders to your wingmen and to listen to (see as text) radio chatter you have to initiate the text line, write the command and press the enter key. For example, to have your flight group attack the nearest confirmed enemy planes, you press the ’-key followed by FLIGHT, ATTACK and Enter. This can be somewhat tricky to do if you’re suddenly jumped by enemy fighters.
On the plus side, the actual instruments and cockpit interior looks good and are easy to see.
Flying
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Strap in and start flying. A joystick is (as in all flightsims) absolutely essential. The controls for everything but the view is OK, you simply have to learn what key does what.
The flight characteristics of every plane is different. The P51D has all the power to accelerate you want, but can easily enter high-speed stalls when you try to outmanoeuvre a Japanese Zero. The B17 is every bit as heavy as it looks, but will get you back home on 2 engines and full of holes.
Looking out of the aircraft through the windows can be a little frustrating. The P38 seems to have a metal bar from the window pane right where I would like to look. In general, looking out the window does not give you a very good feel for what is around.
Fighting - the Enemy
The artificial intelligence (AI) put into these enemy pilots is awesome. I have not yet found a way to manoeuvre them into a position, where they are easy to hit. They will not only fight in the horizontal as in older sims, but they will fight you in the vertical as well, using loops, dives and turning dives to outmanoeuvre you. With this kind of AI you actually get a good feel for the value of a good airplane. If you can find yourself a couple of German ME110’s or Japanese George’s and you’re in a P51D, then the difference in the plane performance will give you the edge.
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Test PC
Pentium 100 with 48 MB RAM. Matrox Millennium graphics card with 2 MB RAM. CH Flightstick Pro.
(I tried to install this game on a Pentium II 266 with a 3D graphics card and 64 MB RAM, but I couldn’t get the sound to work, maybe because of a faulty driver for the Creative SB AWE64 sound card).
Niels Schou Pedersen, nipe@slv.dk
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