GameOver Game Reviews

Game & Publisher Fighter Pilot (c) Electronic Arts
Overall Rating 32%
Date Published , ,


Divider Left By: Pseudo Nim Divider Right

You know, it's interesting to watch the progress of a game developer. There are fortunate exceptions, but the usual trend goes so: first, the developer puts out a game which attracts attention. Their name becomes known, they become popular. They continue putting out games, either based on the previous one or new ones. Then, at some point, boom! They put out a game based either on the NAME of their first game, or based on the fact that 'They know our name, they'll buy the game'. As you might guess, that last one usually is complete, utter crap. Case at point: the sixteen Command & Conquer spinoffs, including Sole Survivor, which I still can't understand why it came out. Maybe it was the pre-alpha Command & Conquer, with no units or buildings, that they figured they could cash in on. Anyway, this time the gavel of judgement falls for EA's Fighter Pilot. What is the judgement, you may ask? You'll be right to. This game sucks. Badly. This is exactly what I was talking about: I'm almost willing to bet it was put out either a) because EA thought their name would get the game sold (sure as hell worked for me) or b) it was a project some programmer of theirs wrote while he was in maniacal depression over a Quake loss, and they figured, if Plane Crazy sold, then damn, this has to.

Either way, they had no right to put it out. Then again, what is right? Let's not get into stylistics here. In this case, 'right' is what the consumer wants - basics of supply and demand. Thing is, the consumer doesn't really know what he wants, and, like most of today's items, the brand usually determines the choice. Stop! Teach them a lesson! Hmm, I'm getting into propaganda here. Must stop.

The gameplay in this game is sad. I mean, you fly a plane. But that's pretty much it. The physics feel similar to the early Wing Commanders. Thing is, Wing Commanders were always in space, so they never had to deal with lift, stalling, and elementary plane dynamics. What is 'realistic' in space is pretty disputable considering our current level of technology. What's realistic on the ground is not really disputable, considering, again, the same level of technology, as well as pure common sense. I was able to stall my plane ONCE. And heck, I think it only happened because I hit the sky. (I mean that, by the way.) Immelmans are easier to do in this game than with your own hand. There's a computer voice to let you know you're too close to the ground, too. Listen to it. It's telling the truth. But feel free to ignore it, since hitting the ground does nothing. Or did I pass over it at five centimeters altitude? Shouldn't have. That maneuver that I did should not have generated any lift to get me out of it, I should've crashed. The Hand of God must've helped me.

A few interesting facts. I suppose EA knew this game is for people who couldn't care less what a missile does, so long as it hits the bad Commies. Sidewinders are active at 3.3 kilometers. I mean, that's, like, whoa. Like, whoa. Like, whoa. F-19: Stealth Fighter, back in 1992, billed Sidewinders as active at 16 kilometers. I've seen all sorts of numbers ranging from 16 to 30 km on the average. But THREE? Guns work at 1.4 and less. I'm too exhausted to complain.

The visuals in the game are halfass decent. The plane detail is bearable (I wonder if they used that publicly available .3DS model of the F-18 Hornet off the Web - I should compare. No wait, I'm never running this game again.) The Migs and the Su's look okay too, though I thought at close range not only did they look the same, but the Mig-25 looked an awful lot like the Tornado. Maybe I was blind. Maybe they couldn't find a freebie model of the Mig-25. I don't know. Another neat thing: I'm sure they wanted to show off particle effects, so when you shoot down a plane, be that with a missile or cannon, they keep flying. If two planes flew in formation before you shot one, they still will. I tried to capture that unforgettable memento in one of the shots. Look at it, pity it. More so, the 'particle' effects feel more like a black band with an animated black cloud texture. 3D? Pfft. Don't speak Muwambanese to me.

The voice effects are pretty good. In the sense that they're far from bad. Meaning they don't use 4 KHz, 4bit mono sound. Sounds pretty FM-quality to me. Otherwise, I don't think it can get any worse. The cheesy speech is annoying (beat this phrase: 'What do they have, monkeys flying those planes?'). Hi there, a skilled Mig pilot won't fly straight staring into the rounds of cannons flying at him! Interesting thought. Maybe this is a scientific study and this game in fact utilizes a patented, revolutionary Monki-Matix fuzzy, furry logic AI based on studies of two opposite-sex baboons over a two-year period? Judging how 'Banana! Monkey eat banana!' might transmigrate into piloting skills? But then, why are there no monkeys in the cockpits eating bananas? Either way, I could probably write a better AI as a batch file. Mine would be really bad, but hey, mathematically, any positive integer is greater than zero, right? My point.

I'm not biased. There are some good things in this game. For one, there seems to be a storyline. The pilot who you play is avenging the death of his father, picked the same nickname as his father, which, originally and living-on-the-edgingly is 'Cobra'. *snore* "What?! Where was I? Oh yeah, so then back in the summer of '41, we all dressed up as girls to dance at the Nazi bar in ..." Remind you of anything? Should. [If it still doesn't, that was from The Simpsons.]

Sort of neat, actually. When I went into the Options menu, I sort of wondered, why is it so that there are no settings for control keys in it? I thought, 'Hmm, a flight sim - that means I'll have to push lots of buttons and see what they all do.' I can still feel the sharp pain in my brain when I clicked on Start Mission and saw the so-called 3rd-person view. It sort of hit me then what kind of game this was. Perhaps the 'Current Weapon: Sidewinder' (of which I had twenty-four - does a Stratofortress carry that much?). or maybe it was the Armor gauge that had all the colors of the rainbow? Or could it be the blinking SHOOT NOW! indicator? Oh, I know what it was. It was probably the screen after the mission, which summed up how many points I scored and what my Bonus was.

Did someone say multiplayer? Hah. It has it, true. But if you can find a friend to play it with, don't consider him a friend anymore. Or he won't consider you a friend anymore. There are very few games who are completely worthless in single player and yet an absolute blast in multi - and, for some reason, they are all first-person shooters. This is not an exception, and please, don't force yourself to check it out. You might get a severe maniacal-depressive syndrome.

Whatever the case, Fighter Pilot is bad. Really bad. In fact, it is so mindbogglingly, humongously bad that it'd take me a whole page written in neat italic type to describe just how bad it is. (Hey, and I thought iF/A-18 CSF was bad. Almost makes me want to raise its score a bit.)

Highs: not really - ceiling's sort of limited. Oh, game highs? Um. You can shoot stuff and not get arrested. You get points too. I like points. They make me feel better than I am. Did I wander off-topic again? Oh yeah, you get lots of missiles you can fire off, too.

Lows: eval(Realism.Level.Value) = 0; Challenge = none. Fun = none. Missions are so unvaried it makes me think it's stuck in a loop. Kill plane. Score point. Kill building. Scream woohoo. Score two points. End mission. Get bonus.

Bottomline: This game sucks. If you need a game where you can 'shoot stuff and not get arrested', play G-Police. It was challenging, the graphics rocked, and at least the missiles looked different. Run from this game like you'd run from another Clinton-Lewinski article.

Graphics: 10/20
Sound: 6/15
Gameplay: 6/30
Fun Factor: 8/20
Multiplayer: 1/5
Overall: 1/10



Rating
32%
 

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