June 28, 1999 Web posted at: 4:40 p.m. EDT (2040 GMT) by Bernie Dy

From...

F-22 Lightning 3:

(IDG) -- Certain people believe you can win military engagements only through air power: some of them work at the White House, and some work at NovaLogic. The third installment of NovaLogic's F-22 series puts you back in the pilot's seat of America's upcoming air-superiority fighter, from which you'll enforce policy with guns, missiles, and nuclear bombs. Lightning struck twice for NovaLogic, despite mixed critical response. Will the third time be any different?

Gameplay

F-22 Lightning 3 is really F-22 Raptor redone with the engine used for NovaLogic's MiG-29 Fulcrum and F-16 Multirole Fighter games from 1998. Some impressive graphical enhancements have found their way into the code, including such weather effects as hail, rain, and appropriately enough, lightning.

But gameplay is otherwise identical to MiG-29's and F-16's. You can fly quick missions, take a tour through one of six campaigns, or fly in multiplay. As before, the flight model is light and puts F-22 closer to the action genre than the simulation one. There's no stall warning, and stalls and spins are almost non-existent. The game engine does handle redouts and blackouts, angle-of-attack modeling, and maximum speed limits.

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The total of over 50 single-player missions sounds like a lot, and they do cover different tasks such as escort, suppression of enemy air defenses, air-to-air combat, and air strikes. As I played, though, I felt like I was playing the same game over and over, in a litany of "fly to waypoint, kill target, fly back." The addition of a nuclear weapon to the arsenal and a few weather effects seems more like expansion-pack fodder than the breakthrough features of a new sim at full price.

F-22 L3 certainly remains an entertaining possibility for gamers new to the series, and some of the new autopilot features greatly relax the workload for casual players. But for the initiated, there's room for much more. Games that cater to light sim players should have a bit more flash. Yet F-22 L3 coolly offers little reward for finishing a campaign, whereas NovaLogic's own Comanche series has always given the player some videos as prizes.

Also, F-22 is sometimes difficult in ways that it shouldn't be. Missile use is a very real part of modern combat, and the game does a good job of giving players the sense they're in a "push-button" war. But avoidance of enemy missiles must still be done by watching a small attack radar: you're still missing a threat padlock view, something players really wanted back in MiG-29 and F-16.

In addition, F-22 L3 lacks features now becoming standard, further giving it a dated image. The campaigns and missions are scripted, with no randomness. The player's squadron strength is still limited to two planes, though the wingman is an aggressive fighter. And the AI is generally weak: opponents only try to avoid your missiles half the time, and allied squadrons assigned to help you are often torn apart like paper tigers.

NovaLogic's online arena, NovaWorld, remains an impressive service, allowing for decent performance in deathmatch and option doesn't work well with all sound cards. Prospective buyers cooperative play even on slower modem connections. One new feature in F-22 L3 is the inclusion of voice support for NovaWorld, but this interested in this feature may want to check NovaLogic's Web site for compatibility listings and look into the game's just-released 13MB patch.

Graphics

The graphics are certainly attractive, but they also made me feel like I was replaying an old game for the third time because they're little changed from F-16 and MiG-29. When most gamers shell out $50 for the latest sim, they expect to spend at least some time impressed by new graphics.

Still, the new weather visuals are well done, and I really like the screen-shake when you fly through flak or survive a near-miss from a missile. And even on a PC now considered entry-level (a Pentium 233 with a Voodoo card), F-22 L3's performance is very good.

Sound

The background music is unobtrusive, as it should be, and the sound effects are good. Radio calls from the tower, the airborne traffic controllers, and other squadrons are functional and help build a more convincing atmosphere.

Overall Score: 5.0 out of 10

F-22 Lightning 3 is really just more of the same, albeit with a small, refreshing twist: Unlike in previous NovaLogic flight-sim packaging, the Lockheed Martin logo isn't emblazoned on this box, nor are the usual (and questionable) claims of realism. This honesty is welcome, and should give flight-sim diehards proper purchase signals.

Even for the casual simmers who loved NovaLogic's first two F-22 titles, however, there's little new here. Crash-free play, nice aids for novice flyers, a mission editor, and good performance help earn F-22 an average rating, but unless you just couldn't get enough of the earlier NovaLogic games, playing F-22 L3 is like watching a re-run.