Just bought Falcon 4.0 Allied Force

[Safe-Keeper]

After receiving three gift cards to the same store this Christmas, totaling more than 1000 kroner or about 158 dollars, I suddenly had enough money, by far, to acquire a new game or two. I found myself wanting a high-realism flight sim', with IL2 and Falcon 4.0 Allied Force being the two candidates. I ended up with Falcon, missing my brother's old FA-18 game (the CD was damaged beyond repair).

Already in the store, I was sorely disappointed. I was promised a "huge manual" by a review and the booklet that came with the game was a mere fifty-one pages long. The main menu music was a very short loop which got tedious to listen to. The theater options had no descriptions, just placeholder strings (the description of Korea, for example, is something like "Korea" - wow). Worse yet, apparently only three of the tutorial missions, those on navigation (Basic Handling, Take-Off and Landing) had documentation in the manual. I cursed myself for picking up Falcon instead of IL2, and actually went for two days without playing my brand new game at all.

Well, today I gave it a second chance, and now... well, let's just say this game is a keeper. There is a huge manual (700+ pages), it's just a separate PDF document. The main menu music can be turned off or replaced. I'm sure I can get people to elaborate on the theatres online or find something about them in the monster of a manual. And it turns out that every tutorial has documentation - the documentation is just sorted by category (for example, the Maverick missile tutorial is in the chapter on Maverick missiles - in fact, the tutorial is the chapter on Maverick missiles). It seems the booklet pretty covers pretty much tutorials only, while the PDF documents covers everything else.

And holy S', when you sit down and take the time to learn how to play it, it's one Hell of a game.

My most successful sortie so far was the attrition of four ground vehicles by means of Mavericks in the training mission. I overflew the town four times, dispatching a rocket each time and tracking it with the Shift+7 weapon camera. On my last pass, my fuel tank got hit by machine gun fire and I found myself "bingo on" fuel and with no reserve tanks. I needed to land, so I gained some distance from the town, found myself a flat stretch of land, released the landing gear and air brakes, and touched down. I flared a bit too much and ended up on my aft wheels and tail, but the aircraft stopped nice and easy without flipping over, exploding, or both (when I tried to open the flaps, if F-16s have them, with the 'F' key, I found that I could record in-game action, so if I can find it, I've got a short clip of the landing for whoever is interested:p). Hey, any landing you can walk away from...

So long story short - this is one Hell of a game. I'm going to work my way through the weapons tutorials and all the other tutorials and then try a full-fledged campaign. Wish me luck!