And forth cometh another day, and forth cometh another flight sim. Okay, slight exaggeration, but the idea's there - my disgruntlement at JF3:FB didn't pass yet, and here comes iF/A-18E Carrier Strike Fighter. And... well... let's just say in some things, this thing is about as inferior to JF3:FB as F19 is to, say, Jane's F-15. And no, that doesn't mean F19 was a bad game - it would be heresy to say that. In any case, here are my impressions.

To start with, it seems like everyone's into the 1st-person menu view in flightsims these days. You walk here, walk there, etc. I admit that it COULD be well-done, and, in fact, I like the iF/A-18's system a LOT more than that of JFB - so, I suppose, we're getting somewhere. That, quite unfortunately, is one of the very few good points about the game.

Disappointments? Let's see, where should I start. Graphics, perhaps. You fly missions from an aircraft carrier, which is very cool - however, it's pretty badly done. For starters, the water around the carrier looks really ugly. Not just ugly, incredibly ugly. Let's just say the words 'flat color' pretty much describe how it looks. In addition to that, the occasional waves that supposedly pass beside the carrier... not only do they seem to have some clipping problems, they look like anything BUT waves - a good description would be a laser beam from some weirdo alien dude, as they're perfectly straight and look perfectly round. The plane itself looks okay, and, relatively speaking, it looks very good, when you compare it to whatever's around it - damn it, the aircraft carrier isn't even textured well. The sky doesn't exist, the water LOOKS textured once you take off - but if you ask me, that's a tiled 64x64 texture, and it sure as hell ain't moving. Crashing into the carrier results in a camera spin of it - and by God, you don't want to crash into that thing, as the view you get is even sadder than when you take off. More whining: night missions are horrendous. I mean, I'm sure they're trying to save some memory by texturing the lights on the carrier only once you're about 0.1 clicks away from it - but, um, guys, hello-o, it's a night mission, it WOULD help if it were visible from a reasonable distance so that you could orient yourself by what you see and not what your radar tells you. I'm sure that some people might disagree with this, but then again, I belong to the class of people who land without ILS, and dammit, no boasting, but I can do it well. That is why I'd rather SEE where I have to fly. Incidentally, the plane doesn't have ANY lights on it during night missions (not more during day ones, either). I'm sure a good reason would be that it makes it more stealth-like, but what good is stealth if you're dead trying to land and ramming your wingman? Fine, if you want to keep lights off in enemy territory, I can't stop you, but friendly airspace - hmm.

Which brings me to another issue - controls. [No logical connection, but 'what are you gonna do' ;)]. I am very grateful to the iMagic people that they made them re-mappable, as the default ones will make you go insane. EF2000 had a neat feature that would allow you to turn off either one (or both) of your engines. I love that - good for miscellaneous situations, and better than just killing one. iF/A-18 also has it - but you CANNOT guess the keys, unless you look in the key help. While in EF2000 they were [ and ], which makes logical sense to me, in iF/A-18 they're CTRL+L, and CTRL+R. There is SOME logic to it, but using this combination requires you to take off your hand from the joystick - or, more likely, just diverting your attention from the screen (unless you're a touch typist, but not many are like that). Pretty sad, if you ask me.

Gameplay-wise, it's pretty uneventful. A neat feature is that to take off you can't just afterburn from the carrier - you have to release the catapult, which, I suppose, is a bit more realistic. You have four wingmen, but, unlike JF3:FB, they don't tend to crash into the ground too often. You have multiple scenarios, single and training missions, the usual bunch I'd say.

The sound, put very simply, sucks. The radio chatter you hear in the aircraft control tower is cool, but that about sums it up. You SORT of hear some background music, but I'm not sure what the melody is - and all the other sounds are pretty damn bland. You do get the usual 'Altitude Low' or 'Pull Up! Pull Up!' messages - and believe me, they help - because you can't tell the ground from the sky, especially at night - but see the graphics section for that :).

Multiplayer support exists in this game. What a shame. This will, maybe, sound somewhat harsh, but I really think they shouldn't have included multiplayer support in this game - they should've reassigned the people who wrote the multiplayer code on other duties, such as optimizing the engine, making the music sound better or, on the extreme, to bring coffee and Jolt Cola to the graphics guys, seeing as to how overworked they were creating the models and the textures for the game.

All in all, however, I have to say this game is a LOT worse than average, and I really can't suggest it to anyone. There is, quite frankly, nothing in this game that you cannot get with other titles - if you want the thrill of carrier operations, play JF3:FB - it's bad, but nowhere nearly as bad as this title. The combined defects in graphics, gameplay and overall impression cannot justify anyone playing this - and, in my opinion, this is a yet another stain on Interactive Magic's not-so-hot reputation (iF-22 anyone?). In today's age of the likes F22 ADF and Jane's F-15, it takes a LOT more than what iF/A-18 has to make it worthy of any notice.

Highs: some realistic features, such as catapulting from the carrier; first-person 'interface' is not bad; Lows: abysmally bad graphics, game runs EXTREMELY slowly on a 3Dfx card (dammit dudes, what do you need?! A Voodoo 2? F19 ran on my XT, and it's graphics weren't much worse), horrendous default controls, more.

Overall: a pretty bad flight sim, and unfortunately one belonging to the all-new and growing category of things that should have never seen the light of day. The light of the fluorescent lamps at your local EB, I should say. Sort of like mutants in post-apocalyptic games... but that's fiction; this, regrettably, is the reality.