The day was hot, and likely to get hotter still. Avi was used to the cool breezes from the sea. There was no such breeze here, not today. The day was early, yet, not even halfway to mid day.

The base, as ever, was filled with sounds. His flight suit kept him cool, if not completely comfortable. He was worried.

The night had been filled with false alarms.

The E-3 that NATO had loaned them had been tracking the ingress paths of Su-30s, their flight paths like knife points towards the Ethiopian air bases. Every so often the alarms would go off and the pilots would run to their aircraft. But then, just meters, sometimes, over the border, the Sudanese pilots would break off, turn tail and fly away.

It was obvious what they were doing; they were testing the Ethiopian defences. Testing them, finding weak points, and waiting for the moment to exploit them.

It was a little war, a little war that was part of a bigger war, to the North.

Avi wondered about home. Reports had been fragmentary, and probably censored. Syria, the old enemy, aligned with Iraq had been building up its military, ready to war with Israel and Turkey over the water which Turkey and Israel denied their neighbour.

And because Iraq and Syria could not take on Israel and Turkey alone, it was necessary to create another problem. That problem was Sudan, half starved, ravaged by civil war and famine, it was Iraq's ally nonetheless. And as such did Iraq's bidding.

On April 15th, the Sudanese military fired eight rounds of VX tipped Scuds into position along the contested Ethiopian border. Perhaps intentionally, the Israeli military advisors were among the casualties. In response, Israel sent three squadrons of the Hel Avir to Ethiopia, even in the face of UN concerns.

For Israel, it was simple, someone had attacked an ally and injured and killed Israelis.

Kether Squadron was his Squadron's codename. It had another name, once, the Spitfire Squadron, its colours and Livery revived for the first Squadron of the beautiful new American plane the F-22. His Squadron's name was still a secret. They used the codenames for a reason. The other Squadrons there were Malkuth and Binah. They flew F-16s and C-130s, respectively.

"Hi," the woman said. Avi turned and shook his head, and grinned.

"Come on, captain courageous, look lively!" she grinned. The woman was a Palestinian. It was strange, he thought, but 20 years ago, such a person would have been a second class citizen, not flying a Barak into combat.

"Cheer up," she said.

"Thinking."

"Moping, must be the English blood."

"Maybe. Everything okay?"

"Yes," she frowned, "everything is fine, my squadron is ready for war."

"I only hope…" he began. "no, I cannot hope, it will happen."

"Today?"

"Maybe. Yes, that would be about right."

"You worried?"

"Yes, Lieutenant, I am worried. We are badly outnumbered and outgunned, even by the bloody Sudanese air force. I have 28 combat planes, an AWACS and a reasonable ROE; they have more than 200 combat aircraft, and have never heard of a ROE in their lives. I have ten Karnaffs, and that is all I can rely on to keep the supplies coming in."

They both looked up into the skies, involuntarily.

He was being stupid, he told himself. He was a Captain of the Hel Avir. His Great- grandfather had been a RAF pilot during the Second World War. He had the sky in his blood. He had the greatest war machine ever built under his command.

Line from Yeats wandered through his mind…

"…nor law nor duty made me fight nor public men, nor cheering crowds, drove to this tumult in the clouds…"

And then, as he shook his head, and went back to his duties, he heard it.

ZANEK!!!!!!!!!!

It was time to go to war.

I have been playing TAW consistently since its release in September. In that time, I have completed about five campaigns, and three of those campaigns have not been completed to my satisfaction. I lost in other words. This was an occasion for much complaints, sulking, and generally acting like an idiot. How the living $^&&$ could Sudan defeat NATO??? But defeat it they did. My incompetence to blame.

Now, it must be known that the period I have possessed TAW has coincided with the period that I actually had not got a computer! I had a motherboard, a P350 chip, some RAM, but nothing else. I was playing TAW on my best friend's computer, and my sister's computer (my old P200), and I was not playing it often. Often enough to complete three campaigns though (one win, two losses).

When my computer was finally ready, it was one of the first things onto it, alongside Falcon 4, and my beloved EF2000 and F-15. And on Christmas Day, to offset the heartbreak of a long distance romance, and to avoid Christmas TV, I sat down to play TAW. TAW was always pretty fast, with some frame rate hits in places like airports, and in big dogfights. Oddly, it was not the amount of enemy aircraft that slowed things down, but drawing the red triangles really did mess up your frame rate. Now it was eerily fast. So, I loaded up Operation Highland and played away.

And then I noticed something.

Where the hell were all those Rafales coming from?

I am now towards the completion of Highland. And a small thing that was bothering me is now becoming a very big deal indeed.

In Highland, every 20 minutes or so, the Sudanese Airforce generate a large sortie of around 16 Su-27 Flankers. Off go our heroes and shoot them down. Then 20 minutes later there are another bunch of them. And another. And another.

And indeed, another. Sometimes, these sorties are a little behind a Su-25 strike force. Like their fancier brothers, the Stormoviks seem to be endless in supply.

Did you know there are less than 400 Su-25s in the world? And that figure includes a lot of airforces (Russia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq and Poland). I have personally killed at least a hundred of these things in Operation Highland alone. Very odd.

Click to continue

Sometimes, on CAP, your mission takes you over an enemy airbase. Ah-hah, look at them all - 20 enemy aircraft just sitting there, waiting to be strafed. And as you pull away, feeling smug, the airbase, whose entire fighter compliment has just been destroyed, is launching MiG-21s after you. MiG-21s, which, incidentally, can take on F-15Es and win. Indeed can take on whole flights of F-22s and win. But that is beside the point.

In Operation Highland, I have killed, or ordered the deaths of, so far FOUR A-50 crews. Does this seriously affect enemy CAPs? Not that I have noticed, and I would not be surprised to see another A-50 up later when I continue playing.

Are these bugs? No; rather they are design features, and strange ones at that.

Now, TAW has a perfectly functioning real-time consistent world; in that regard it is somewhat more convincing than any other dynamic campaign that I have seen, other than what I have seen of Falcon 4. You end one mission with an enemy strike group 20 minutes away from your base, with a flight of F-16s scrambling to intercept them. You start a new mission five minutes later, and the F-16s have engaged, but the enemy strike group is now 15 minutes away. This is really impressive and rather mind-boggling when you think about it. And this is happening all over the theatre. Wow.

The issue with the endless supply of enemy fighters is about game balance. It is, I think, a deliberate way of keeping the action going.

TAW is an outgrowth of EF2000; its basic template hearkens back to those days, a combination of mid-res flight modelling and dynamic detailing of a modern war. Eurofighter 2000 was a scary game, still is. You have, in that game, under your control, NATO's greatest weapon, but it is still merely a fighter plane with all the weaknesses that entails. Enemy forces, with such aircraft as the Su-35 could match you to an extent with technology and beat you with numbers. That game taught you to treat the Su-27 series of aircraft with the utmost respect. The game was not without its flaws, such things cannot be, but it was a classic. Then came F-22.

Putting the F-22 in a simulation game is always going to be problematic. Consider for a moment, a thoroughbred air superiority fighter designed and built to swat out enemies at the stand-off range. Something that can more effectively control airspace than the mighty F-15 or F-14. Now, consider, this craft is stealthy, and can remain aloft for longer than its older siblings.

Consider a plane that can enter enemy airspace unseen and remain there for many hours, armed with the AMRAAM, that most deadly of missiles. An aircraft that can dominate enemy airspace for hours, a true frontline fighter.

Imagine you are an enemy pilot. Imagine that somewhere in YOUR home airspace is an aircraft that can see you long, long before you can see him. This aircraft can kill you long before you even know you are under attack, as finally, your RWR screams that something is inbound. And then he can accelerate away at such speed that your friends cannot catch him. Until he is out of sight, then he turns, and again, starts to hunt. Think about it.

Forget about what you may think, or may have heard or inferred. This is what the F-22 is designed to do. Perhaps an aircraft like the Su-37 could challenge it, but it could not achieve superiority against it. Such an aircraft would be amazing to fly; it handles like a dream; the best elements of the F-15 and F-16, in one terrifying package. Perfect for a game you would say? Well maybe.

Well, modelling the F-22 is problematic. Factor one. People have flown it, and liked it, but they ain't telling much. DID got pilot assistance of various kinds, from NATO airforces, but I don't think there were too many F-22 pilots amongst them. They would not be the most useful resource, anyway. In fact one game, which, deep down, I shamefully suspect to be the most accurate F-22 model is (I'm sorry lord, I'm sorry!) Novalogic's F-22 Raptor. Arcade game, you cry! Hmm, yes. LMTAS helped, and one or two of the F-22 test pilots tested the game. By that token, the F-22 in TAW is probably TOO hardcore….

Flight modelling, is, however, only half the story in designing the flight experience in a sim game. (To digress, external physics and graphics texturing for speed impressions are also a very big factor). Super-accurate flight modelling would be hard, if not impossible to achieve. After all the aircraft's Common Integrated Processor is said (according to Janes and the World Air Power Journal) to be in the lower end Cray class; surely that could provide a smooth ride.

Which brings us back to game balance. Games need to be fun and challenging, otherwise we grow bored, and that, for a game developer, is bad business sense. Flying an F-22 against any potential enemy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation would only be fun for a little while, but would soon become tedious; nothing that anyone has in their inventory is a credible threat against it.

Certainly a Rafale would be a dangerous adversary, or a Eurofighter or the Sukhoi-37. Both the Rafale and the EF2000 are almost as capable as fighters, and they are better strike aircraft; the Su-37 has many of the F-22s advantages. But no-one has many of these; France, Britain and India are hardly likely to be enemies of NATO anyway. Russia, if it were to become an enemy again, would be heavily reliant on older technology, and its Su-37 and MiG-35 (Thrust vectoring variant of the MiG-33/29M) forces would not last long in the face of logistical problems.

Go to Part II

Or click HERE to access our review of Total Air War.