For example, in the single missions, when flying any of the bombers, you can switch to the rear gunner position. There is one point in the game where MicroPose have gone too heavy on the realism, though. The enemy intelligence is also pretty good, with things like pilots ganging up on you (or more annoyingly, running away), and ships that veer about to avoid incoming torpedoes. They even stall differently with, for instance, one giving you a few moments notice, while another just falls away and goes into a spin. But better than that, it's not generic, and all of the planes feel totally different. The standard flight model is like the hard flight model on many other sims, while the "realistic" flight model is, well, "realistic". dogfighting is so hectic that you don't really notice.) The realism So you have to knock the texture mapping off the ground and sea. It's an excellent padlock view, by the way, but very possibly because of this fact it eats into the frame rate like a starving elephant. The only real problem that arises is when dogfighting, because that's when you'll be wanting to use the padlock view.
The good news is that, even with a 486DX 33MHZ machine, you get some pretty good results. The graphicsĪs you can plainly see, we're talking a guru-shaded extravaganza of rotary bitmaps in a sauce of texture mapping. However, the difference with Carrier Battles is that when you send out a bunch of aircraft to attack, say, an enemy ship convoy, you get a box up on screen asking you this important question: "Do you want to join the strike?" Click on "yes" and you're strapped inside the cockpit of the lead plane. And in the original game, that was about it - it was kind of "watch the dots and control everything from afar" - something that doesn't appeal to everybody. Carrier Battles, like Task Force before it, is essentially a strategy game: you play it from the scrolling map, zooming in and out, clicking on your ships, issuing orders, sending spotter aircraft aloft in the search for your enemy, and on and on. This all-new package is sort of "tied together" at a genetic level. Task Force revisitedġ942 :The Pacific Air War contains Carrier Battles, the follow-up to a Task Force 1942, which was actually quite good. Oh, and one more thing about the film editor is that, if you stuff up in a mission, you can replay the film to the point just before the disaster and simply jump back into the action. And, of course, there's a free-floating camera which can be placed anywhere, zoomed in, out and so forth. Not only can you summon up exterior views of all the planes in the sky, but you can even plop inside them at will and use all the side views, cockpit instrumentation views, padlock views, rear gunner views and so on. The film editorīorrowing heavily from the Dynamix games, 1942 contains a full, mega, ninja-flight film editor. The inclusion of the mission builder is quite generous when you consider the norm for this type of thing is to hold back until a game is reaching the end of its shelf life, and then release it as an add-on disk for $20 or whatever. In fact, it's the same one the programming team used to make the missions in the game itself, meaning that everything they've done, you can do as well. The mission builderġ942 contains an extensive mission builder. There are more single missions than you could shake Delia Smith's drippy hairstyle at, and as for the ongoing war career, well, make that six ongoing war careers. There are ten planes on offer overall, and the chance to specialize in fighters, dive bombers or torpedo bombers.
I'll get straight to the point and simply say that 1942: The Pacific Air War is quite special, although it's not something that necessarily hits you instantly - it takes a couple of hours of piddling about before it dawns.ġ942 is a W.W.II South Pacific extravaganza in which you get to fly for either the Yanks or the Japs.