You know what? I think I'd be bl**dy skill at flying a fighter jet. I've flown simulations of the EF2000, F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, A-10, and loads of others too, including the odd attack helicopter or 6. Yeah, piece of cake. Take off, loose off a few AGMs at a passing convoy, score a few incoming bandits with the odd sidewinder missile, and be back in time for tea and hot buttered scones. No worries. The F-22 may be LockheedMartin's latest and greatest multi-role aircraft, but I clambered into the virtual cockpit with a not insignificant degree of equanimity all the same.

You may remember that a few months ago Interactive Magic and Novalogic were in the midst of a pitched battle regarding the use of the F-22 Raptor mark and the aircraft's likeness, etc. Basically, Novalogic tried to block Interactive Magic's use of them, as Novalogic also have an imminent F-22 sim. Anyway, the matter's all resolved now, so we can look forward to a clutch of games based on the F-22, of which this is the first. (Discounting Novalogic's previous F-22 Lightning, which was released before the real aircraft's roll out, and which many people feel is more of a game than a sim anyway.)

The immediately noticeable thing about iF-22 is a) it comes with a huuuge map of Bosnia and the Gulf, and b) (OK, two noticeable things then) is that the manual is an impressive, spiral bound jobbie. Hurrah!There are two CD's included, 1 for the Bosnia theatre and 1 for the Ukraine theatre. Installation is easier than arm-wrestling Mr Bean (if, er...he was real, and liked a bit of an arm wrestle), and fully customisable, so you can install the bare minimum, or go for the full monty and tearfully wave goodbye to 600Mb of hard drive space. You can even choose to install DirectX or not! Jings!

Upon loading the game, an introductory sequence presents itself. Standard stuff - you see an F-22 smoke a couple of buildings and then a couple of MIG-29s. No SAM's, though, and when the bogies are hit by missiles, they, umm... break into 3 pieces. Hmmm, interesting. The menus (or 'PDA') are purely functional, and after calibrating my joystick (which seems a little odd to me - this is a Windows 95 game after all, and I've already calibrated it from the Control Panel) I hit the 'Instant Action' button. After what seems like several aeons, the pilot (ie. me) is plonked firmly in the cockpit.

State of the art

What a dull an uninteresting cockpit it is too! The three MFD's (multi-function displays) take up a large part of the cockpit. I much preferred the system utilised in EF2000 (which I'm going to be using as a yardstick here, I think!), where the MFD's are placed out of the field of view and can be looked at by scrolling the cockpit down. Maybe that's how the real F-22 is, I dunno. I don't like it though, although I'm sure some will. The cockpit appears very flat and drab too, nothing like EF2000s virtual cockpit and glowing displays. Looking out of the cockpit reveals a flat mass above you which are clouds, apparently. I'm pretty sure they don't look like that though! Below you are the hills, valleys, buildings and roads, and at 30,000 feet they look brilliant. Very photo-realistic. Skim the ground at a few hundred feet, and things look quite different though - either a mess of pixels that seem to 'pop up' as you get near, or with a 3D card, a dirty, smudgy mess. Yuk.

They're your brown trousers, they are

'Ah' you think 'I can live with that though - I don't spend a lot of time looking at the ground. The combat graphics are what's important.' Oh dear. Fire a missile. Go on! See that solid, white trail that your missile leaves in it's wake? That's smoke, that is. (It has been described as 'toothpaste', and that /is/ how it looks!) OK, now shoot something. See that scattering of black pixels? That's an explosion, that is. OK, now select an external view mode. See that odd looking, pixelly thing which somehow seems to stand out against the lovely landscape? That's you, that is. The word 'arse' springs to mind. It gets worse. Fly too low, or hit a snow-covered hill (might as well be a giant sheep, mind you), and do you witness a cataclysmic explosion, from some dynamic camera angle? Do you hear the grinding and twisting of metal, or see a heart-stopping crash landing, before your aircraft gracefully slides into the trees? Nope. The screen goes black, and you get a static picture of an F-22 crashing with it's nose being broken off.

There are other problems as well. There have been reports that the sound occasionally only comes from one channel, and sometimes none at all. More seriously, the game seems incredibly jerky, even with a 3D card. That is, if you can get the game to work at all. It seems that iF-22 will only work properly if you have a very specific combination of drivers installed on your machine. Indeed, after a week or so I decided to install the latest version of Microsoft's DirectX (5) on my PC, to see if there was any performance increase. Trying to play iF-22 after that resulted in my joystick not working properly, and the game crashing completely when I tried to switch to an external view mode.

Eject! Eject!

It's a pity really, because there appears to be a decent game in there. A wide selection of enemy and friendly units, training missions, and a good dynamic campaign. The crux of the matter is that iF-22 feels and looks like a beta version, and nobody should be expected to pay for buggy, drab-looking software. Maybe after a few patch releases it'll be worth considering, but I can't recommend it at the moment.

 

iF-22 by Interactive Magic

Specs	O/S	Processor	RAM	Graphics	CD-Rom	Soundcard	MMX	Direct3D
Required	Win95	P90+	16Mb+	SVGA	X4 speed	All major cards	No	No
Tested On	Win95	AMD K6/P166 MMX	32Mb	2Mb Matrox Millenium & Orchid Righteous 3D	x8 speed	SB AWE32 & Yamaha DB50XG	Yes	Yes

Dale Wilks for Game Over!