Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2311 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Contact Sales
• Released on: 2005-09-23
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, the successor of Falcon 4.0, is an advanced F-16 combat flight simulator for the PC. The player takes on the role of a pilot flying a multitude of missions in either the Balkans Theater of Operations or the Korean Theater of Operations in a fully dynamic, evolving war.

Customer Reviews

Excellent
Falcon 4: Allied Force is a remake of a game that was originally released several years ago. The original Falcon 4 was a flight simmers dream, with excellent graphics, realism that was unmatched, and a fantastic campaign mode. But the original wasn't perfect, a large number of bugs, and frequent crashes were the price to pay for what was a very innovative game.

But Falcon 4 kept a solid fan base, many of them have been releasing pathes and updates to the original, making it more playable. This has now led to Falcon 4's re-release, and while the game has had MANY improvements, it is still a re-release and not a sequel.

Graphically, Falcon 4.0 is far from ground breaking, and while the original graphics have been enourmously improved they do not quite reach the level of Lock-On: Modern Air Combat, they are however roughly equal to FS2004, and other slightly older titles.

It isn't the graphics that make this game stand out though, it's the gameplay. First of all, there's the campaigns: two of them with one over Korea, and the other over the Balkans. The land area is vast, and both campaigns can be played in the past (1990's), present or near future. What really makes these campaigns stand out is the fluency with which missions are put together: if you take out a target in one mission, it will also be gone in the next. Every kill you make has an impact on the campaign.

Finally, there's the gameplay. Falcon 4.0 is probably the most detailed simulation of an aircraft ever released for home computers. Such a detailed simulation does come with a price though: literally hundreds of key commands, infact printing the complete list would use FOURTEEN pages!

In terms of realism, gameplay and general polish, Falcon 4: Allied Force is almost unrivaled in the flight-sim genre. Graphics do seem a bit dated (even with the improvments), and sometimes parts of the game seem not to have been updated. The game is also perhaps a little too in depth for more casual gamers. Overall though, this game is fantastic, and has everything you might expect from a combat flight-sim.

A complex tale...
Falcon 3.0 was one of the first games I owned on my humble 486 in the early 90's. It was difficult and complex, but ultimately very rewarding. In the few years that followed there was a strong legacy of flight sims on the PC; TFX, EF2000, Tornado, IL2... These were relatively "realistic" (insofar as a game can be) but crucially they were also fun.

Since that golden age it seems the flight sim is no longer as popular as it once was; or perhaps the market for computer games has expanded so that it now occupies a smaller slice, proportionally speaking. Either way, one thing is clear. Most flight sims on the market are SERIOUS. Falcon 4.0 is the SERIOUS-IST.

I did less work for my degree than it took me to learn how to fly the F16. I can now operate 6 different forms of radar, can flick all the little switches in the right order to turn on the auxilliary power supply, and I can calculate ideal turn rates based on G-forces and altitude. But it took a lot of work; the PDF manual that comes with this edition is some 700 pages long and not entirely well written. I spent a lot of time picking up pointers from the many web-based virtual squadrons out there.

The game itself does some things very well. The campaign is engaging, instant action can be a good blast, and there is a huge degree of customisability. Why not 5 stars? It's missing some things. The graphics and overall feel of the game feel very dated. I don't mean this in a shallow way, like that it doesn't look pretty. I mean it's not very nice to interact with, in the way that most modern games are. The tutorials don't tutor at all, you've got to have printed off the relevant chunk of the manual and hold it next to the screen while you fly to use them. There's nothing like tooltips over the myriad buttons, and the learning curve is way steep, even if you have played a few sims before.

More lethally, there isn't much to drive you through the game. Sure the campaigns are good and complex, but there isn't much in the way of exciting stuff going on to make you want to log in and play a quick 30 minutes in the way that something like Rome: Total War would do.

That said, Falcon 4.0 is probably the best military flight sim available at the moment. In a way this is a shame, as it is so incredibly hardcore it's not likely to appeal to the casual gamer and so this segment of the market will continue it's final descent into geekish nerdery before publishers decide it's more profitable to knock out a few generic FPS's rather than concentrate on what used to be one of the crowning jewels of the PC as a games platform.

WARNING WARNING... PULL UP PULL UP!!!
It was so long ago when I got the first Falcon 4.0 that I now can't remember how long ago it was... maybe as much as 9 years??? Anyway, in all that time, NOTHING has come out to equal it in terms of detail, complexity and accuracy as far as flight sims go. Perhaps there have been flight sims that have managed to look better, (eg Lock On), but looks aren't everything. The gameplay in Falcon 4.0 was spot-on, whether it be in the single missions, or the campaign sections. Sadly, it was marred by bugs on release, and although patches were released, they never quite seemed to solve the issues. A dedicated and capable community seemed to take it upon themselves to release update/mod after update/mod, and whilst these numerous unofficial patches served to counter the bugs, they did tend to muddy the water to some extent, as each update required it's own new manual addendum, (when your basic manual runs to 500 plus pages, all of which are required reading, several addendums is not what you really want!).

So, this new, updated version of the original, with bugs fixed and an all-encompassing manual (allbeit an adobe file on disk), is very welcome indeed.

There may still be better looking sims out there, but the gameplay with falcon 4.0 is still top dog. I have Lock on, and in that program, in campaign mode, I found myself flying the same missions again and again, as the complexity often obscured the actual aim of the mission, causing me to spend an hour or so, flying an incredibly stressful combat mission in which I would take out almost the entire enemy contingent only to land and be told I had FAILED because I missed one!!! In Falcon 4.0, you get credit for what you have done, if you manage to land safely. It makes a big difference.

Yes, there is a big learning curve, and there are no short-cuts. The manual has to be read, and the training missions have to be completed, though you can skip some if you are fimiliar with general flight manouvers and navigation. But having made the effort, I feel it was genuinely worth the effort. It has always been a program with fantastic potential. I believe this new version has finally seen the realisation of the original dream... a fully funtional simulation of an F16. With this, you can not only fly one, but you can also take one into battle, and wupp-some-ass!