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| PC Review | |
| Category | Flight Combat Sim |
| Players | 1-250 |
| Difficulty | Hard/Very Hard |
| Review Date | 1/98 |
| Publisher | Interactive Magic |
| Minimum System Requirements |
| Pentium 133, 24MB RAM |
| 2X CD-ROM, 60MB Hard disk |
| Recommended: Pentium 200 |
| 32 MB RAM, 250MB Hard disk |
| 3D accelerator, Flight controls |
When a game comes with a substandard manual (no index, poorly organized, assumes you've played earlier versions), crashes all the time (we're talking complete system lock-ups requiring total power-down) and its online multiplayer component is still in beta (though they didn't tell you that on the outside of the box) then you can pretty much rest assured that it just aint worth the trouble. Unfortunately, Interactive Magic's Air Warrior III is fun enough to fool you into thinking it still is worth the trouble. "Unfortunate" and "fool" are the operative words though: as it stands, Air Warrior III -- the most recent version of the veritable WWII combat classic -- is too problematic to recommend.
If you're new to the genre, you
might not know the long history of this groundbreaking massively multiplayer
game: Air Warrior III is the latest incarnation of Air
Warrior II, which was previously called Air Warrior for Windows and,
before that, Air Warrior for DOS. The story doesn't end there: Air
Warrior was actually the first real-time online multiplayer flight sim,
appearing over ten years ago on the Mac. A decade of development means the Air
Warrior flight model is one of the best of the genre and the new offline
campaigns, enemy A.I., and mission editor found in 1996's Air
Warrior II finally made it possible for newbies to sharpen their skills
at home before joining the intense multiplayer combat that made the game so
unique.
The just-released Air Warrior III beefs up last year's offering with four new planes, a ton of new missions, enhanced off-line A.I., and support for 3D accelerators. For the most part, these additions are quite successful. Long-time fans will be happy to know, for example, that the fullscreen close combat view now includes all important flight instruments, texture- mapped terrain and much more recognizable enemies. New Air Warriors may be less appreciative, however: though the visuals are a huge improvement to the hopelessly outdated graphics of Air Warrior II, they are not nearly as impressive as most flight sims these days -- the runways and ground structures are square gray boxes, the terrain has little variation and the poorly rendered smoke, explosion and sun effects are always the same. Fortunately, the new planes and missions are a much more successful addition: the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero (or "Zeke") available in the Rising Sun campaign was a joy to fly. What really surprised me was the enhanced enemy AI: in Air Warrior III, computer pilots pay attention to the planes they are using and make tactical decisions accordingly.
Though all of these improvements are welcome, Air Warrior III, like its earlier versions, has a number of rough spots. It still has weak and repetitive sounds; a boring "red out" to signal your death (no exciting explosions); and hideously out of place cartoons between missions. It still uses an arcane inflight command interface and an obnoxious window placed on top of a cockpit for "siutational awareness mode." It still is close to impossible for a new flight simmer to figure out what is going on due to sparse in-game help and a shoddy manual. And it still has too few WWI planes and missions with terribly slow loading cockpit art. Worse, there remains only one outside view and flying the plane from it is next to impossible. (So what if outside views are not realistic? They are fun!)
Since online play is in beta it
is hard to say how different it will be from Air Warrior
II. According to Interactice Magic the new online arena will soon provide
computer controlled strategic historical missions along with the three country
free-for-all dogfights. With this enhanced mode of historical play supposedly
in the works, it is especially unfortunate that there is still no ability in
fullscreen mode to see player names above planes (ala Warbirds 2.0).
Again, it may not be realistic but this sort of easy recognition would make
strategic battles a lot more fun. In short, there are a ton of things that could
have been improved that were not improved.
Despite its flaws, however, Air Warrior III probably has more than enough to satisfy a WWII flight enthusiast. Or, rather, Air Warrior III would satisfy the enthusiast, if he/she had the patience to sit through system crash after system crash. Let's be honest: We could live with the bad manual and the arcane commands. We could live with the little annoyances like the situational awareness mode and the boring red-out crashes. We could even live with the repetitive and mediocre sounds and lackluster 3D graphics (heck we happily played Air Warrior II for almost a year). And yes, we could even live with a beta version of the online arena. But we can't live with system crashes! Especially when playing a game that takes so long to load and play as Air Warrior III. How'd you like to fly a 45 minute mission and have your system lockup just when you're about to finally engage the enemy? It's enough to inspire fits of non-aerial violence.
Now I'm sure that when Interactive Magic gets its act together, this will be a favorite among sim fans and a title worth owning. Unlike its main competitors Warbirds 2.0, and the new Fighter Ops and Fighter Ace, Air Warrior III provides not only a massive online arena but it is also a complete stand alone game, with over four-hundred missions, twenty campaigns and fourty-five planes. The online price -- ten dollars a month instead of Warbirds' two dollars an hour cost -- is another selling point. All this and more could make Air Warrior a winner. For now, however, Air Warrior III is little more than a rush job. If Interactive Magic can fix the problem with system crashes and you loved Air Warrior II, you'll want it for sure. After all, Air Warrior III is just Air Warrior II with a facelift, and Air Warrior II was and still is a top-notch sim. But until the code is pruned of its bugs, you'll definitely want to save your cash.
While massively multiplayer flight combat used to be a simple choice between Warbirds and Air Warrior, the online skys are becoming increasingly crowded. It's tough to say how Air Warrior III will compete against the several new online games in the works. My advice? Try one of the three beta-testing online sims that you can currently download and play for free (The Zone's Fighter Ace, Interactive Magic's own Fighter Ops or SimGuild's Flying Circus), and once you're tired of them, Air Warrior III might actually be a finished product.
Revolution Report Card |
C |
| + New 3d acceleration + New enemy AI - Graphics still weak - Multiplayer's not ready - Crash, crash, crash - Bugs, bugs, bugs - Still too hard to learn |