Product Name: Mission: Combat Force
Category: Flight Simulation Addon
Developer: Ron Jeffers, Phil Castellanos, Dave Eckert and Frank King
Publisher: Abacus
Release Date: March 2007
System Req.: Windows PC, MS Flight Simulator X.

Article Type: Review
Article Date: September 04, 2007
Article Author: Aaron "Spectre" Watson

It's been a long, long time since I graced this place with a review, and it is darned good to be back!

To keep me out of trouble, I have been tinkering around writing a column for a magazine called Flight Journal. This periodical, published every other month, has a few regular features, one of which is my Virtual Pilot column.

Back in the February 2007 issue, I took a gander at the newest offering from the folks at Microsoft games, Flight Simulation X, or FS:X. As stated therein, the finest of their iterations to date, and not just due to eye-candy type enhancements. They had put the game back in with something they call missions. These are challenges of varying complexity for you to accomplish, and a reward is added to you logbook by so doing. Very cool stuff.

So, after getting away from it a bit with other projects, I decided to look back, and see what kinds of add-ons had been created in the last 6 months, since a Software Development Kit was also kindly released since the original publication.

The usual haunts were combed through, with varied results, but then I stumbled upon a place I hadn't been to in a few years, AbacusPub.com. There was a title shown that was to be released within days of my discovery. Mission: Combat Force. It starts with an A-10, my favorite modem attack jet, and the capability to use weapons on added targets! The flour bombs have grown up!

Install and Docs

So, I slid my $30 toward Abacus on the day it came out, and they tossed an email link my way for the download. For 95 cents more, I could have the CD sent, but this looked to be just what I wanted, and waiting would not have tickled my instant gratification button. Once my speedy little cable connection had laid the 270 MB download into my preferred directory, I merely double-clicked the executable.

After plugging in the Capt. Crunch mystery code, also included in the email, I was ready to hit it!

Is Mission: Combat Force a Hit or a Bomb?

Fire up FS:X, and click the missions area to the left, use the drop-down and choose Mission: Combat Force. Nothing. What? Choose all missions, oh, there they are, interspersed with the stock missions, with varying difficulties. OK.

Two beginner missions marked as training, out of Nellis AFB, NV. Cool! I've wrenched on Warthogs there in real-life, so a tie-in is fun. Take a look at the brief, the overview tab gives a four-line description, and depicts the green-skinned A-10, with teeth. Yich, I hate P-40 teeth on a warthog. Tusks are cool, but the tiger teeth always grated me.

Click on the details tab, blank. Maps and charts, same. Hrrmmm...

Click fly, and I find myself sitting on the ramp, in external view. Some guy chatting about the GAU-8, and there is a box in the upper right saying ab_30mm-cannon, 500. Interesting. I'm to ground strafe a building? That can't be. Weight on wheels switch should prevent that. The Shift-D, normally mapped to drop flour bombs, is the trigger. I happen to have it mapped to my X-52 trigger. Fizz-pop-fizz goes the anemic sounding GAU-8a. Adjust left a bit, more fizz-popping, and the building goes boom. Flames and smoke as well. Neat.

I switch from the 2D to the 3D, as is my MO during most FS:X flights. Yee-ach! What is this? A big black, well, THING about three-quarter of the way up the HUD. That won't work, I can't see a thing. Back to 2d, which looks pretty good, anyway.

I am directed to take off, and head toward a target. I get clearance, line up, and start rolling. A notch of flaps at 80 knots, and get ready to feel light. 100, 120, no nose lift. 130, 140, light back pressure on stick, 150, 160, what the heck? Running out of runway, and this sub-sonic beast finally wallows into the air at about 220 knots! Whoa! Slap the gear handle up, not much improvement.

It doesn't want to climb for beans until over 250. That ain't right. Up that notch of flaps, and wallow on up. Finally feeling in control at about 300, I roll left toward the target. A music-accompanied voice tells me that there are tanks to whack at target one. The added trees make it a little difficult to spot, but I nose down and let rip at the marker. Fizz, pop. Fizz, pop. Nothing. As I overfly, I see a platoon of desert camo tanks a quarter mile down the road. With "Bitchin' Bob" piping up quite frequently with such items as "Sink rate," "Too low, terrain," and "Don't sink," it doesn't get dull as I sling it around for another pass.

Little glowing blob in center ... GAU-8 30mm?

Now, when it comes to using the gun, there is no aiming reference, per se, but the tadpole gives at least a little idea. You have to aim WAY over it. Little spheres of yellow generally roll out, and you will be rewarded with a detonation and accompanying smoke and flame if the system judges a hit. A second platoon of armor was directly under the indication arrow, so was a breeze to take out, with a general up and down hosing.

Things to blow up in FS:X? Outstanding!

Upon return, I had to go around, as my usual line of approach was ineffective with ol' "Don't sink" Bob serenading me. Coming in high and diving at the runway seems the best method.

In the second mission you start airborne, and have SAMs in your face! After the initial shock, you realize that these are merely unguided rockets marking the spot of their launch, which is handy, as the area is indicated generally, and there are three SAM launchers to take out, with a brace of rockets to use. Their ballistics are, well, challenging. With a little of the TAR aiming system, or "That's About Right", and a half-dozen passes, I was able to pop them all.

You are then given vocal encouragement, and mid-air re-armed with cluster bombs. Your new target is two rows of barracks. I quickly discovered that the same free-fall dynamics of the flour bombs is utilized. They drop straight down from point of release, no inertia or anything, no matter the angle of attack. I shack 'em both, and get a lovely certificate for my troubles.

Whew, OK, training is done, I take a gander through the list for the missions. There are five, as the title says, "Combat Missions": two Intermediate, an Advanced, and two Expert. I decided to take them hardest to easiest, and tried out "Terror in Germany." Interesting side story, but again, no details, or anything on the maps/charts tabs. I took out a bridge, a few SAMs and some armor, that suddenly appeared on my base as soon as I landed. Most interesting second landing, be sure. I got a little white knuckle flying, so not bad.

Saving the base, but can I land?

Off to the "Amazon Drug Cartel" mission where things start getting weird. Your runway is a bunch of barges strung together. Not so bad, except you later have to land and leave enough room to take off again…three times!!! You also arrive at the barges by a boat, which you are piloting. The radio crackles with instructions, and gung-ho goofiness. Boats, tanks, and hoofing it on foot are the other modes of transport available in this A-10 combat simulation. If you check the flyables, they are all there, along with a new area to fly in, Antartica, as opposed to Antarctica. Something they seem to have had too deeply coded to allow for a typo correction.

The South American scenario offered tedious runs on SAMs, then RTB, (in this case return to barge), go for a couple of camps, RTB, a house, and six unreported, and hard to find SAMs, then RTB. Oops, wait, take off again, fly 50 miles, and then be told there is a nuke 50 miles back, within three miles of the barge! Mid-air switch to guns, take the beast back at 600 mph to beat the timer, and ah, phooey.

Yeah, I got through it, and the reward, but it really didn't seem like a challenge, as it was so far fetched and seemingly pointless. I went through the next few, and didn't even bother to finish them. Also, on that over 1-hour mission, I netted a whole 0.1 hour of boat hours, whee! Since that is what I started in, that is all it logged. The same goes for missions where you start out on foot, you've got tenths of hours of boot time, but little on the airframe this is depicting. It gets even further out there when you hit the next mission: "The UK incident." Chasing around saucers on foot, intercept this ugly blue blob in the sky, and get turned into a motorized glider. The "Antarctica Raid" and "Japanese Missile attack" are unique in their own seriously disturbed ways.

So lets sum it up.

A-10, fine looking model.
A-10 that stalls at 250-300, and is capable of 600 knots? -
Things that go Boom? +
Things for explosives to hit? +
No way to guide them but TAR? -
Grating, varied sound level comms? -
Tedious missions? -
Tanks that hit water and jump 100+ feet in the air? -

Oh, yeah, forgot about that little gem. While toodling around Antarctica, you are tasked to bash your way to your A-10 in an M-1 Abrams tank. And look, there's baddies, and you get to shoot at them. No aim-sight whatsoever, as you are in the open tank commanders hatch, so the TAR method is just that much more exciting.

Boy! Do those 120mm rounds drop on barrel exit!

But wait, there's more! If you decide to make a lemming move, and end it all in the water, like I did, you are given an extra special treat! Your gadzillion pound tank is tossed nimbly through the air, hundreds of feet up! It has aerodynamics, and can be guided back like an aircraft and landed, what a neat trick.

OK, I am through thrashing on this, and, as seen in the sum up, there are some plusses to it, but this is a commercial product. It comes off as a slapped together hobbiest add-on from some semi-talented enthusiasts, not a dedicated team of professionals. There are some things you could walk away with, like the buildings and vehicles that can be destroyed, but you'd need to be able to work in the SDK, and that is beyond the scope of most folks who just want to fly and blow things up. I won't even free-flight this, albeit nice looking, Warthog.

On this one, I would recommend a pass.

Join a discussion about this review…

Review System Specs:

• AMD-64 Opteron (2xCore) 2.6GHz
• 2 GB Patriot RAM
• EVGA 8800GTS (320 MB)
• WinXP Pro