Jet Fighter: Full Burn (c) Mission Studios
51%


By: Pseudo Nim

Many flight simulators come out these days. I suppose it's not nearly as similar to the 1st person shooter arena, or the RTS arena, where anyone with some basic idiotic knowledge of DirectX programming and VB5 can churn out trashy titles in a fortnight, - but the sim arena has its similarities.

Take Jet Fighter 3: Full Burn, for example. I want to say it right away, this is not a bad game at all; however, when compared to the 'big' guys, such as F15 or F22 ADF, it doesn't excel in many areas. For one, it's based on the original JF3 engine, and, well, that engine, is, well, OLD. Even though the game's been spiced up with 3Dfx graphics, it just doesn't LOOK right. It looks too much like it was a regular no-thrills-no-frills engine that just needed a 3Dfx addon, so someone took the textures, Image / Image Size'd them in Photoshop, they became wiggly, smooth, and completely undecypherable, and then put them in the game. But that, I'd say, is the absolute least of its worries.

One very major problem is that it doesn't seem to want to run well in any OS medium. The original JF3 was for DOS, so I righteously ventured into my beloved Dos boot, booting my beloved 6.2 - config the parameters, sound, music, etc - run the game - look at the briefing - go to hangar - click on fly mission - screen blank - awaiting the takeoff - expectations rising - boom! Back to the hangar. - amazement at my inability to click buttons - point to 'Fly' - click - expectations rising - boom! Back to the hangar. Anyway, I won't bore you with specifics, but let's just say after banging my head on the wall [read: clicking that 'Fly' button] a dozen times, I realized I needed a different approach. After (unsuccessfully) trying other things, such as Instant Mission or Training, I shoved DOS and booted back to Windows. Here my problems were alleviated.... but only partly. The FLYING part worked (yay!) but now the sounds took a trip south. They sounded like those #@$%@T workers fix broken houses, which always seems to happen at 7am. Anyway, all I could hear was a very rhytmic 'boom-boom-boom' - but since I'm not in Samoa [apologies to the Simians... er.. Samoans], I gave up and switched the soundcard settings to None. In the short time of the ritual dance drums, however, I managed to get it to the flight - and I actually heard SOME midi music. So there, 3 points for sound. That fixed it... if that can be said.

By then I was a bit understandably disgruntled. Anyway, I got to the actual game and ... well, let's just say my first thought was 'Where's the beef? This is JF3, the original, dammit!'. But I already mentioned that. Now, to specifics. Graphics aside, there are actually some neat things to JF3. One, and major one, for me - is that it has carrier takeoffs and landings. That is SO incredibly fun, I can't believe there are no other sims, done with more style and skill that don't have it... Anyway, points to JF3 for that. Also a neat effect is when you lift off the ground, you see your gear decompress, sort of fall down lifelessly before you retract it. Neat thing.

Now to complaints. First, and foremost, why can't I shoot my wingman? What kind of real war is it when my rounds just go through him? And, before y'all start getting disgruntled at me for saying such a blasphemy, here's a situation for you: say you're in a dogfight. You bank, see a Mig, squeeze the trigger, then suddenly you see your wingman starting to fly towards the bullet volley. In _real_ life you'd obviously let go of the trigger, and will have to realign for the shot (assuming you're not dead). In JF3, you just keep a-firin', and the wingman will just fly through the bullets. Not cool. After all, isn't that Realism?

Another complaint is his formation. Why does he always have to fly at 10 o'clock? Am I not the wingleader, so shouldn't I be able to tell him WHERE to fly? I'm not sure if I could somehow change it - but, well, it's somewhat annoying. Stay behind me dammit! And, incidentally, the AI, I found, was quite dumb - once I saw that the wingman was steadily at 10 and wouldn't budge anywhere, a devious thought occurred to me - I flew so that I flew over a hill, hugging it, and letting it pass on my left side so that 10 o'clock was, well, obstructed by the hill... I don't know if it was a feature, a bug, or general overall stupidity, but the wingman crashed into the ground. That was the last straw - I didn't want to play the game afterwards.

All in all, this sim definitely has some neat features - but other parts of it are quite passe. Many improvements are needed to make it competitive... and I just doubt it has the budget for it. And, another defect just came to my mind - top this one: to fire your machine gun, you press... semicolon. And NO, I wasn't playing with the keyboard. Well, partly - since I still can't shell out the cash for a F16 WQS to pair up with my F16 FLCS... but anyway. Guys.... ever heard of a trigger? No? Sorry I brought it up, never mind.

Ratings - in short:

Graphics: 13 / 20

Sound: 3 / 15

Gameplay: 15 / 25

Fun Factor: 14 / 20

Multiplayer Play: 2 / 5

Packaging: 0 / 5

Overall Impression: 4 / 10

Overall Rating: 51 / 100

JF3 In Brief:

Pros: carrier takeoffs/landings, believable physics, VERY [read: VERY] extensive joystick support, you can belly-land and even water-land.

Cons: idiotic wingman, no friendly fire casualties, 3Dfx graphics sort bring shame to the name, aircraft detail extremely bland, gameplay uneventful, sound completely screwed up, unsure WHICH OS this game is for.

Overall: an okay flight sim, with absolutely nothing revolutionary (except the damn carrier landings ;)), which is absolutely no competition to the giants like F15 or F22 ADF. It's more from the same ballpark as 'iF-22' or 'F22 Raptor', or 'Lightning II' (which aren't BAD, just not "up there") type of game - so if you MUST have every flight sim that ever came out, pick it up - otherwise, steer clear of it.




Rating
51%