Review by Mark Arnott

Game:         Back to Baghdad
Publisher:    Military Simulations INC
Format:       CD-ROM
Available:    Now (American Import from SPS)
Requires:

O/S:          Dos 5.0+
Processor:    Pentium 90
RAM:          16 MB 
Graphics:     VGA + SVGA
CD-Rom:       X2
Soundcard:    All major cards supported

Tested on:

O/S:          DOS 6.22
Processor:    Pentium 100MHz
RAM:          24Mb
Graphics:     SVGA 1Mb
CD-ROM:       Quad speed
Soundcard:    Soundblaster 16
Controls:     Keyboard  and  joystick

Back to Baghdad

Back to Baghdad (B2B) is an F16 Flight Simulation. You will need to note that it requires a P90 16MB minimum to run, there is 128MB on the CD and installs 90MB onto the HDD. A 77 page manual is supplied, but it is rather disjointed regarding it's content. This is quite a technical Simulation and I would expect to see a well prepared manual with more detail than the one supplied. It is biased towards owners of the Thrustmaster FLCS and WCS system, so if you own the said equipment you'll be all right. Thumbs down then for the manual.

The front end of the Sim is pretty basic and looks quite dated, with mouse driven menu's and photos of F16's. If Thrustmaster kit is not going to be used, then a normal joystick is satisfactory and a second can be added to be used as a throttle. The calibration of sticks is good, and there are some good options for setting the main controller. I found flying with the default setting too responsive, but this can be dulled and also set so that a small movement will cause the ailerons to move only slightly, but the movement ratio increases with more stick input. These options are called Deadband, Shaping and Gain.

From the main menu you can choose Instant Action, Training and Missions. There are only 32 missions available with the game, which I consider a bit limited, maybe there will be mission disk's later. There is no mission builder either, so, considering the price of the game, it`s really not good value for money.

When creating a pilot there are a few photos to choose from, but a nice touch is that your own mugshot can be added in. There are seven training courses to be carried out, and I suggest you try them because the radar needs quite a lot of practice to master. There are six air to air modes and eight ground attack modes. The radar screen is located on one of the two MFD's (multi function displays), and on the other you can toggle JTIDS, stores, damage, waypoint, or laser weapon sight info.

During normal flight the items in view are HUD (head-up display), MFD's, Threat indicator, Alt (altitude) and speed dials. It is possible to look down into the cockpit to see more instruments and some of these should really be on the main view. These include, wheels up/dwn, AOA (angle of attack), compass, engine RPM, fuel, and afterburner state. There is no key-press available to look behind you, and you have to use the left or right cursor keys to scan the view round until you end up checking your six. This is not ideal if you're dogfighting and need to see if the bogie is on your tail.

To move from the main menu to the cockpit for flight takes a long time due to loading of data. The detail level can be chosen from four levels of complexity by keypress once sitting in the cockpit, this ranges from blocky to fine detail. If high detail is selected it slows down the PC quite a bit, unless a top speed Pentium is being used. A lot of flight time is spent over desert and is a bit boring, but in contrast to this, I carried out a dusk mission near Baghdad and on the run-in to the city the curtains of tracer fire could be seen ahead, which certainly brought some atmosphere to the game.

The flight model is very good if set to difficult in the options menu, in fact, I found it harder to land when set to easy. Some missions are carried out at low level and I found it difficult to monitor the Radio Altimeter height display in the HUD because it was too small. The main Alt tape on the side of the HUD shows barometric height which is no good forterrain avoidance.

All of the usual weapons are available and this is the first simulator that I have seen that actually allows use of a tactical nuclear weapon, you have to make sure that you're pretty high up before using it though. The laser guided bombs are difficult to use because the target acquisition is rather tricky, and many times I found that I had passed the target by the time a decent lock was obtained.

Navigation is carried out by using Tacan (Tactical Air Control and Navigation), which is not bad for waypoints, but when selecting an airfield to return too it can get a bit complicated.

I have to say that I found this Sim a bit lean in most respects. Why is it so processor hungry without appearing to actually be doing anything? It has a simplistic manual and front-end, limited missions, and no planner. That said, it is nice to fly, and behaves well in the aerodynamic sense. It could have been much better, and one can't help thinking that it was put together in a rush.

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Rating: 5/10 (Fair)
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