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Rating : graphics 91, sound 88, interface 92, fun factor 98, overall 92
Your tour starts out at Top Gun. You, and several of the best the Navy has to offer, fly 10 missions against the instructors and each other. I like the score keeping used here. For every missile you fire, you lose points. For every bandit you shoot down, you gain points. Real basic, and lots of points for us gunslingers that prefer tight eye to eye combat over 70 mile kills with AIM-54s. My only real complaint here was that there was never a scoreboard posted. I had no idea how many points I was ahead of my classmates, or if I was behind. I was real surprised when I was told that I was behind in points to Stinger, even after I had smoked him several times before.
After Top Gun, you are deployed to Cuba, where pro Castro forces are launching an offensive against our bases there. I thought the Cuba campaign was kind of like playing against the little leagues. Here we are in state of the art F-14s going up against ancient Mig-21s and 23s. It didn’t get real exciting until the Cadre showed up.
The Cadre is a group of mercenaries hired by Cuba to help them in their airwar with the US. The Cadre are not your average pilots. they get to run around in top of the line Mig-29s and SU-27s with firepower equal to yours. Now things start to get interesting.
The rest of the game pits you against the Koreans, the Libyans, and the Cadre, in a quest to find out what really happened to your father, get the girl, and score more kills than any pilot should be allowed. Throughout the rest of the campaign, the Cadre are your real challenge. While the local forces can be a bit overwhelming, the Cadre pilots really know how to fly.
Top Gun concentrates on the fun parts of combat flying, while eliminating, or allowing the option of eliminating, the tedious chores included in most flight sims. You know, things like landing and taking off. One of the first things I took advantage of in this game was the ability to end a mission without flying all the way back to the carrier, circling forever, and then trying to land on a postage stamp. When all the mission objectives have been reached, simply hit the escape key and end the mission. I love this. I enjoy landing every once in a while, but there are times when I want to get back in the thick of combat right away - [yes dear, as soon as I finish this mission I’ll come visit with your folks. - No, it’s not over, I haven’t landed yet ;> ] -
I am impressed with the flight model in this game. There is a definite zone of peak efficiency, and areas where the F-14 feels like it’s flying through molasses. Most of the bandits appear to react well in close combat situations. If you let a Mig get on your tail, hope you wingman is close and is willing to help you out. It would be nice to allow some sort of communication between you and your wingman. Telling him to pull back to avoid SAMs, or to clear your tail would definitely help.
The graphics are also top of the line. The cut scenes are well done, not too long, and almost always relevant to the storyline. Plus you can always skip them to get back into action.
But, even though this is already one of the better flight sims I’ve played, Spectrum has gone the next step and made this a game defiantly worth keeping. Starting this spring, you will be able to go to their web site, at http://www.holobyte.com, and download a new mission. This is great. No more boring patterns, and predictable bogie appearances, plus I have the hard drive space to leave Top Gun on the hard drive just for these new missions.
Overall Top Gun is a great combat sim. with over 40 missions in the main campaign, plus all of the instant action missions, it will keep you busy for weeks.
--- Steve Gerencser
--- krell@psyber.com
