Test System

• PII 300 Mhz
• 32 MB Ram
• Diamond V330
• Diamond Monster II 8 MB
• TM Stick & Throttle

It's always nice to try something new and in that spirit many will feel the urge to jump into a quality action sim, now and then. Jet Fighter: Full Burn does a fine job of providing exactly that: it's a neat thrill ride for the action-inclined and, if you have some horsepower, runs as smooth as pantyhose under 3Dfx.

Unfortunately, fans of the weightier Jane's or DID sims will not find enough complexity in JFFB to stoke their combative interest, to say the least. But all the same, entry-level simmers and virtual aces fed up with manuals denser than LSAT guides are sure to enjoy what this game offers. Even haggard warhorses out there may find this sim to have a certain charm. I did.

Let's begin with the cool: strap on a F/A-18 and head out on a free flight for some low-level barnstorming. Observe (under 3Dfx) awesome framerates as you sweep through valleys and over terrain on par with EF2000 V2.0. On the subject of eye-candy, this sim delivers big by having very nice object-detail, visible ordnance, and explosion effects, all of which I found surreally real. Panning around your jet you get an eyeful of mean-looking Maverick and AMRAAM-enough to make any MiG pilot whimper … a role which, incidentally, this game allows you to perform.

Choose your side carefully and you'll find yourself flying seat-of-the-pants a brand new Mikoyan MiG-42 - a weird-looking delta-wing evolution of the MiG-29 equipped with a pair of forward canards, presumably for shortening take-offs and enhancing maneuverability or something. It's a stealthy multirole plane that handles much like the F-22 in the game, another available option.

Each of these planes is reputed to boast its own inherent advantages within the game, undoubtedly having to do with their sneakiness, radar-absorbency and supercruise ability. I was thrilled to find a good old meat and potatoes F/A-18 with its time-tested engines and combat legacy. The plane has real personality and, in JFFB, ridiculous power under the hood and its customary lethal attack-suite - bombs, Mavericks, M-61 Vulcan.

All right, I can't help mentioning this: When watching your plane in the external you'll see your little pilot dude turn his head to track your position, then look forward again as he resumes the task of flight. God! He even makes glances over at you while he's busy maneuvering.

Also nicely handled is this rushing sensation you get during carrier launch. You really sense the raw speed of the sudden stroke. The deck of said CVN is appropriately bustling with Hornets and their navalized F22 brethren which crowd the scant flight deck; jet-blast deflectors bear the grime of a thousand launchings. Too bad we don't have little ordnance crews and Greenshirts running around: guess we'll have to wait a while longer for that feature to appear in tomorrow's sims. Smoke and, in particular, flares, caught my eye and are well done.

This game gives you a great sense of speed during low-level flight - a la JSF. The reasons for this are twofold: terrain is mountainous and easily gained with the exaggerated thrust of your (Hornet's) twin General Electric F404s. In addition, if you happen to have a wingman, he'll cruise somewhat forward and right of your plane, giving you a fine sense of speed and a nice atmospheric view of the terrain you're whisking over - even if the formation itself is a bit doctrinaire, it pays off by being more fun.

JFFB has a full array of options for the newcomer. From the main screen you may choose to train for the U.S. Navy or for Mother Russia, connect for some multiplayer co-op or head-to-head, or jump straight into a campaign. The training missions are for the most part very easy for someone with simulation experience, but surprises do lurk in the seemingly benign airspace. During one of the ground-attack missions I found myself all at once amidst dark cloudlets of 57mm flak; these would thunk the fuselage and jar the screen in what I felt was a neat effect.

On the other hand, SAM evasion throughout the sim was disappointingly straightforward: punching chaff invariably broke the lock of a SAM. Or, failing to detect a SAM, there was little chance of surviving even one hit, just lawn dart time. Nevertheless, the skies were appropriately dangerous during that ingress phase.

Training involved such menial tasks as landing on the carrier, blowing up a huge factory with one bomb, or shooting down a multimillion dollar drone with a 'winder. These missions were well set up and helpful at easing you into the sim. (That's not to say I didn't get wasted on some of the training missions. Even virtual jet-jocks have overinflated egos, I guess.)

One problem I had with the game concerned the cockpits: by today's standards these seemed rather Spartan - both in their appearance and in their functionality. Graphically, they didn't measure up to the beauty of the world beyond them: both the F/A-18 and the MiG forward views had huge blocky framing pieces over the HUD (to represent the canopy structure) which, while closer to real life, substantially limit the vision of the occupant.

Fortunately, you can toggle the cockpit off and rely on a radar display next to the HUD for targeting, and fly with a clean forward view. The F-22 doesn't have this problem, but I don't like making the compromise in the F/A-18 and the MiG.

Moreover, the MFDs in all the cockpits can be zoomed, (much like JSF) but their contents have a nasty pixelated look up close, even in the highest available resolution (640 x 480). The information portrayed there doesn't turn out to be all that helpful anyway, as the HUD already indicates waypoints and targeting info, eliminating any need for MFDs in the first place. Perhaps it is because they are so seldom used that the game's designers elected to place less emphasis on detailing the displays. The heart of this sim is the campaign, which, fascinatingly, can be played from either the U.S. or the Russian side. (In effect, you're getting two very different campaigns.) The game ships with a hefty four CDs and - lucky for us - not because of a huge installation size, but because there are a large number of interactive cut scenes adorning your campaign experience.

After your first (U.S.) briefing you find yourself in the claustrophobic halls of a carrier, which you can "walk around" by entering and passing through designated areas. Places you'll end up include the briefing area, the hangar, a C.O.'s office, even a cramped cabin for your Maverickesque alter ego. (I found this process of navigation very much like the wonderful Discovery Wings series of CDs which tour certain airbases and stuff.) Now, briefings and ordnance selection are nothing on the order of those in Jane's F-15, but you do have a range of payload choices for different missions. Then you'll wind up "talking" to some ordnance chief or someone about the ongoing war effort . . .

In fact, so much time in this sim is spent observing the accompanying movies that I feel my abilities as a film critic are being called to the fore. As a rule, I find these little acting vignettes in games cheesy in the extreme, but undoubtedly my twelve-year-old brother would get a real bang from the whole thing. (In that vein, I think it's worth mentioning that the Jetfighter series is aimed at fun-seeking or entry-level or younger simmers, and as such, sports a mild learning-curve but mucho fun for said newbie.)

Having said that, I found the bulk of the Russian campaign movie -inexplicably - pretty convincing: your alter ego in the Russian Air Force is Alexei Sokolov, a role that is played with considerable panache and range of facial expression. Alexei is shown in an early scene with his family - very humanly - and later with his commander lamenting the high cost of beef in their post-Cold War economy.

Then there's a scene where his wizened ground crewman expresses how sadly lacking are their ordnance supplies (never mind that he's flying a super stealthy thrust-vectoring MiG-42 which cost a mere eight-bazillion). OK, so the premise is a little far-fetched (You attack Norway for control of a massive oil supply in the Barents Sea, inflaming NATO countries who want that oil too, damnit.) And the President of the United States is named, well … Bob White. But all the same I found the Russian air base pretty atmospheric, with its killboards and shoddy living-quarters, its depressed grounds crewmen and plain decor.

The campaigns are not dynamic in the sense that we've come to appreciate but the missions are surprising and replayable. When you fail you'll be given the chance to hop right back into your MiG and go for the gusto … again. You won't feel like enrolling in a twelve step program after failing the mission because of all this superhuman effort required to reach a target area, only to be swatted from the air by a zip gun before you could drop your bombs. This sim has reasonable flight-times punctuated with quick dogfights and, if you're shot down - no really dire consequences result - you'll just be eager to try, try again.

Both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat are plain vanilla: Hit "T" to designate your next target and let loose a missile. While straightforward and pretty limited, the wingman AI looks solid: your dudes attack when you tell them to; when you're flying straight toward a mountain, your wingman will maneuver to safety instead of automotonically Bonzaiing the hillside. I found this feature pleasing.

In addition, there's a somewhat effective padlock, called the tactical view, which allows you to follow those bandits vying for your six. Close range dogfights occur often and are quite fun. The flight model for each plane is exaggerated, but realism is not a priority here. I'll put it this way: sustained 9 g turns are both feasible and tactically advisable if you want to stay alive. (One exterior view showed my Hornet corkscrewing around in turns about 200 feet in diameter.) There are a range of settings making the flight model more toothsome for the advanced user who may choose to enable "realistic" landings, ground turbulence, and control surface damage. Speed bleed results from heavy maneuvering and you will stall - just remember those are five-stage afterburners you've got and you can whip the ponies when 16,000 pounds of thrust just isn't up to task.

All was not well under the Voodoo 2 card I was using, not in terms of framerates (which were exceptionally good) but because I experienced some system freeze-ups during both campaigns. Happily a patch is already available at the Mission Studios site which addresses this issue: the game's audience ought to pick it up. Voodoo 2 owners should enjoy a passing view that is smooth as silk, a genuinely lightning-fast sim under 3Dfx. I would not recommend the game to those without 3Dfx-based accelerators, however, as framerates and resolution degrade substantially.

Some areas that might need future attention in the game include the effectiveness of long-range missiles: too often I found myself missing a bandit that was absolutely locked-up and my AIM-120 (or at closer range, an AIM-9) would go whistling past. It's reasonable that you would miss from time to time, but even when the bandit is at about twelve to twenty nautical miles, well within the AIM-120's effective envelope, clean misses are observed. Also, some kind of "target view" is in order to espy what the enemy is throwing your way, and there are a lot of neat planes modeled on the JFFB battlefield. I, for one, would enjoy sight-seeing some of the Saab Viggens and A-6 Intruders now and then. Last but not least, more complicated damage modeling is in order so that one SAM hit will not always knock out your engines: I realize these things are deadly but … oftentimes one hit alone is enough to put your aircraft down for the count. Evasion by quick maneuvering doesn't seem to be an option, in these cases. Finding yourself out of chaff, you almost always meet your fate.

Overall, however, this game is quite good at what it tries to be: fun. Even if it is a sim that's quick to learn in the ATF sense, the less-grizzled should appreciate the playable missions offered here. Little brothers everywhere are likely recipients of this game, while their older siblings will for now, I surmise, stick with F-15. Core Rating: 40

• Gameplay: 80
• Graphics: 85
• Sound: 65
• Intelligence/AI: 70
• User-Interface/ Mission Planner: 75
• Fun Factor: 85
• Learning Curve: ½ Hour
• Overall Rating: 80

Ed. Note: The "core rating" is a scale to give the player some idea of what kind of gameplay experience to expect. In general, the "core" rating reveals how "hardcore" of a player the game will appeal to. Factors may include maximum challenge, perceived realism, control-use difficulty, complexity of AI and the depth of gameplay in determining the rating. For information on the "Core Rating" click the link above. Also note that some users have reported installation problems with Full Burn.