Time setting....sometime late in 1994, somewhere in Southern Louisiana...a PC Simulation Pilot by the name of Pierre Legrand is sitting staring at his puter wondering what it would take to make him really happy in a sim. He just got his nickname PAPA DOC and he is a member of the Prodigy Falcon 3 Ladder . He is without any doubt the worsted member of the ladder...really really bad. But it doesn't stop his dreaming. Here is the list he comes up with...

I want a terrific flight model....no I don't want to flight test it (after all I'm not a stinking wannabe Flight test engineer). I just want it to feel like I'm actually in control of a plane and not on some type of rail ride. I wanna feel the inertia, I wanna pay the price of pulling too hard....I want to know that I need to pay attention during landings....AOA matters.

Gimme a Mission Planner

I want to have a simple to use Mission Editor that is powerful enough to create a mini war and yet simple enough that a 1vs1 mission is easy to set up. Lets not forget to have a mission recorder. Preferably with play and reverse along with varied view settings and even wire frame settings. It would be nice if I could just press one button during a mission and it would record. That way I could record those Kodak moments for Mom....

But the most important thing....is the War. Let me give you a little background...a while ago (back in the 80's I think) I read a book called 'The Third World War" by General Sir John Hackett. Well it made quite an impression...his description of the Air War above the FLOT of Germany is one of the main reasons I got into flight Sims...and yet none of them actually recreate that same feeling here in 1994. I want a Full On Balls to the Wall Blitzkrieg type of Campaign...I want it to be dynamic...and hell I wanna feel like its happening as I plan a mission, lets get some fire under that mission planner..

That' a way I'm not just relaxing but I'm under pressure that the strike I'm planning may be too late or the enemy may move out of range or under cover. Let me have the option to watch the enemy ground troops move up on my position. Most importantly I want it to be different every time I start over....I want the enemy to be thwarted by my successful missions and encouraged by my Goofball missions....I wanna feel like I make a difference yet I don't wanna feel like I'm the only one in the war. Naturally the AI should be up to the task of challenging me without obvious cheats.

Oopsy lets not forget that I like plenty of choices....after all its my game and I should get to play it the way I want to play it.

Umm that sound like a pretty good list to start....I wonder if anyone ever does it. I hope so cause that's why I bought this damn puter. I want to fight a desperate battle against long odds for ungrateful people.

Fast Forward

Late December of 1998....Falcon 4 released, it does the above and more!

Here I am four years later in the pitch black night running north, flying so low in my Viper that I feel like I'm some kind of armored Limbo Dancer....only my night vision goggles are keeping me from becoming just another lawn dart in this carnage called the FLOT of Korea. Under 200 feet over 500kts is supposed to be some kind of insurance against sudden death....but not here. Here over the front edge of the desperate fight for Korea there is no insurance....battles rage below, behind, above and to the sides. I tuck down a bit more and hope I can pass unnoticed.....I call my wingman to close up. I'm nervous I see nothing but chaos around me, I call up AWACS for a threat report....

"2 Mig-23's 350degree's 5 miles..Angels 4" This is gonna be close...down just a bit more...at 500kts I wont even know it if I hit the ground...that's a blessing of sorts. We crest a hill....and tracers find us...jink, jink, chaff flare chaff flare...jink...ping, damn I'm hit...plane shaking...avionics....ok... I got it, cool it still flies...damn get it back down...floated up there....oh shit I think the MiG's are interested in dancing. Damn....Boresight Aim-120 up...locked ....give the Lead a shot into his face...keep rolling....trail MiG comes around on us...bitch....mother "Yo Wing clear my six" ....."Break RIGHT!"

Damn that missile was annoyed with me, a Hawk gives the other MiG-23 a break for the rest of his life...damn duck down again...give the order to rejoin...settle back down. Plane shaking, shit broken...damn I don't have any more money to be buying beers for my Chief....call AWAC'S for a threat appraisal, we are cool the closest threat is some iL28's 10 miles away.

MY GOD look at the firefight raging at the front....a brigade of M1A2's is engaging three times that number of T-62's and T-55's...tracers and explosions almost shake me in my cockpit..swirling above the exchange are A-10's attacking, the streaming tracers from their 30mm evidence that someone is having a very bad day, shoulder fired missiles both G2A and G2G flying every which a way....Mi-24's rummaging thru firing rockets at the US and Korean lines to see if anything can possibly be uninjured, 2 AH-64 Longbows attempting to give some relief to the outgunned demoralized US troops....some of those kids got into the Army for the education....well I bet they are getting one heck of an education.

Above, the fight for control of the FLOT is awesome...as afraid as I am down amongst the weeds...I'm still glad to not be up there...up there everyone gets a shot. Enemy's and friendlies...SAMS shoot down both with alarming ease....IR missiles dash hither to smash into the most unlikely of targets friend or foe doesn't matter.

My wingman and I are tasked with attempting to knock out a bridge that the North Koreans are using to rush reinforcements to the meat grinder below...this may perhaps bring some temporary relief to those young troops. The North Koreans are rushing in an attempt to cross as many reinforcements as possible before they lose the bridge. Losing the Bridge is not a done deal...4 have tried so far and not counting the numbers lost supporting the strikes we lost all four. Failure is not an option...I must shut that bridge down.

Succeeding in the sim business..... it's probably easier to complete that mission I just described.

The above description is basically what has lived on my puter from the first hour I opened up the package that is called Falcon 4. With all the bugs (yea they're a couple or more....) simply put this sim is the definition of what a complete sim should strive to be...from the day it was released the rules changed. Some may argue that the sim is plagued with bugs and there is no denying it has a few...but if you attempt to just play the sim and not worry too much about weird stuff...its an amazing experience.

This sim simply wraps you up in war as a F16 Pilot...my dreams of way back, of being in the Fulda Gap have been realized....yea I know its not the Fulda Gap but it sure fits every other description except the location. In my words the Fulda Gap as described by General Sir John Hackett is a shitstorm of mayhem....looks like what I described. Thanks very much G.Louie...and Micro prose Team.

Well I always want to let you know how I feel before I start....kinda gets us off on the right foot.

Falcon 4 accomplishments are absolutely stunning....but for some, the bugs are show stopping. Because I believe that this sim should be on every flight simmers hard-drive I will share what I do to insure trouble free Falcon 4 flight simming. Mind you that I fly almost exclusively Campaign....and this is where the biggest bug lives. My system doesn't crash anymore...but it takes active maintenance during play to insure that .....

Some have raged that the developers are some terrible breed because they released Falcon 4 with a few known bugs. Well if the story about Hasbro threatening to shut down development unless Falcon 4 was released before Christmas is true then I'm all for releasing it. Sorry ....I know this pisses off a great number of people...get over it. Its only fifty dollars and as far as I'm concerned once I got it to run stably and fast it was by far the best 50 dollars I've ever spent. Bottom line I would rather have it buggy and unfinished than not at all.

And the truth is, if it were judged by other sims, it would fare well if the memory leak was not factored in...(the memory leak is a showstopper, but it can be circumvented) the other bugs are of the same type as most other sims have upon release...wingman problems, AI problems, some flight model quirks, little niggling things broken..nothing but the memory leak a show stopper for the single player. I have literally played it some days for 5 hours straight so I know it can run stably.

Some have complained that its a CPU hog...well all I can say is turn down your graphics and enjoy the show and be happy that this sim will still be kicking out fine graphics when you get that Dual K-7 256MB Wonder Machine rolling. They are attempting to model everything that is a war...right down to the individual soldiers....(they can be seen advancing in the excellent view system). They have done it better than any before them...indeed it can be said that no one had every attempted this feat. Micro prose has but low end Pentiums need not apply. You will need at least a 166-MMX with a Voodoo 2 to even hope to start enjoying this sim. If its any help this sim is probably responsible for more upgrades than Windows 98.... But really the graphics are fine even turned down...

Memory leaks...and how I learned to not like the 1.03 Patch.

The original release of Falcon 4 came complete...every option and choice a simmer is likely to ever want or need is there....unfortunately having that many choices makes a program more complicated than the inside of the New York Sewer system. And into that maze some really pain-in-the ass bugs have crept.

The biggest one is the Memory leak. This affects all parts of the sim...but is only really noticed when using the campaign (many more objects taking up memory slots and not giving them back)...it affects computers with less memory first.

As it was explained to me, when an object (unit, plane, soldier) is created it's assigned a slot in memory. When it is through with whatever task... be it dying or ending it's mission .. it's supposed to tell the Program and Windows that it no longer needs the memory slot for that particular object. In Falcon that de-allocation never happens, and the sim will run out of space to assign new objects. You are alright until you attempt to re-enter the sim. Then crash...boom.

What I have done is download a neat little app called MemTurbo. I then enable that app to reside on my taskbar, and after each mission I run the app to free up the wasted memory. Most of the time my memory will be sitting at 1%... after a mission. With MemTurbo I have not crashed when I have used it properly....(crashing meaning my puter....I Crash all the time in Falcon but that's pilot error) Do not set this app to run automagically.... is my advice. (Side note...the crash bug will occur even if you're not in campaign so its a good idea to run the app from time to time.)

Supposedly the 1.03 patch was gonna cure the memory leak... it did not. It DID break the AI. (Not that the AI was super tough prepatch. Apparently they do have a problem activating the radar of both the ground and air units.) But with the patch the AI is downright friendly. Some have reported flying formation, beautiful heartwarming stuff that is but alas that's not the purpose of the sim.

They are slightly more dangerous with the original un-patched version. Though you will see them launch SARH AA-10c's, unfortunately they forget to illuminate the target. This might be a problem with just the Koreans (hey, I'm an optimist.. maybe they were modeling bad training.) I set up a few BVR missions with an F-15C (last nite with a F-14 same results) armed with the AIM-54. He would briefly illuminate me, but not nearly enough to provide guidance to the missile.

This is also happening with the SAM'S. Apparently only Flanker intends to model difficult SAMS as the last two heavyweight Sims (Falcon 4 and F15) have modeled wussy SAMS. A pet peeve of mine is that the heavy weight Sims besides Flanker have decided to make the Realistic settings a bit more unrealistic to allow the Average player to select Expert and win. (As an aside World War 2 fighters decided to give us realistically difficult settings for the AI and got roundly screamed at....shame, shame...as that is truly a fun sim because of the AI.)

My GOD the Campaign is Slow....

Yup its a definite CPU hog...and it eats RAM like some kind of finger food. You got 128mb....well hey, that's great! It really starts into its own at that point. You got 256. Man, you are gonna have some fun tonight! You only have 16...ummmm are you sure your a flight simmer.?

In defense of this sim, many of the high horsepower puter owners that are complaining probably should look at their setup. Especially those who have all kinds of stuff running at the same time. This is most unwise. Ironically, running Crashguard is the surest way to crash.

Virus checkers are also extremely high on the list of things not to have running. Basically only explorer should be running when you start this sim. Don't be like someone I visited recently to install a Voodoo2. This young man has so many different programs running at the same time that he needed a scroll bar to view them all in taskmanager.

Keep in mind that this bad boy sim is modeling a Blitzkrieg attack by a numerically superior force. The tanks are having fire fights and moving semi- intelligently, the soldiers are advancing, SAMS are firing....(after their own fashion...thru hills and such)..and scores and scores of planes are on the attack.

All this while the Sim engine is keeping track in real time of the campaign, its keeping track of every attack, counting scores...advancing positions. And let's not forget that its doing an absolutely terrific flight modeling job. That it runs at all is the strongest testament to how far along Home Computers have come in the last 4 years. That it should need a strong computer should not be a mystery.

But when you do have the horsepower...i.e. strong CPU, lots of RAM and 2 Voodoo 2's SLI'd well then sit back in the mission planner and expand the map. Right click the map and select all the different objects that can be viewed in real time on the map. Sit back and enjoy the show! (Or select COMBAT AP in SETUP, jump into an F16, hit AP and then SHF ~ for Action View).

While you watch the symbols the Radio is keeping your thoroughly immersed with calls for help, request for fire, relief, acknowledging a kill and so forth and so on. Not only do you get to hear it but it also actually sounds real. MPS even modeled the radio signal degrading with distance.

When you get tired of watching an abstract of the Real Time Action select a mission from the Mission Schedule Screen and away you go. If I were you I would click the labels option on the previous screen.....in a minute you will understand why. (note set your sim up so that you are invincible, with Combat Autopilot....did I mention the choices up the yin-yang part...hehe)

Choices ....I LOVE THAT WORD.

Select Taxi. Yes, this sim allows you to taxi. Remember how much fun that was in EF2000? It's even more fun in Falcon. I remember how impressed I was the first time I looked back and saw 10 Vipers trundling behind me, their noses dipping with application of brakes. Most excellent! Get clearance from the Tower. (The tower lady has snakes in her head so be careful). She gets amused by telling two to take off in the same spot in the same time. Worse yet, she absolutely loves doing that to you on landing. I like to look both right and left before taking off, just like crossing the street.

After taking off set your plane to Auto Pilot. Select shift tilde and pop a beer. The action view is an entire sim/show by itself, and it's here that you truly begin to understand the scope of this sim. They have actually attempted to model the entire theatre!! Quit your bitching and upgrade; the train is leaving and the slow puters are NOT on it.

Sure there are some AI problems. If there wasn't any bugs in a sim of this scale I would suspect the Microprose Team of being Aliens. You know, first we buy the sim, then when our brains go to mush from playing til 3 AM every morning and then heading for work, they take over the world...

By and large what you will see is a war ... in a box ...that you can start up instantly and play in. My, oh my! It's really true, the only difference between the men and the boys is the price of their toys! (Mine just got a bunch more expensive..... Dual K7's running with 256 mb of Ram on an NT 5 Workstation. Can you say pretty please with a cherry on top dear Wifey....?

The Good the Bad and the Truly Brilliant....

The bad.....

The bad listed below with comments. Even here I temper these remarks by saying that this sim is extremely complex. And I fear that many complaints may just be not knowing how to work with the sim. So I have attempted to be fair in my critique.

The Memory Leak is by far the biggest problem that the sim has. This is a showstopper and should have been fixed prior to release. Get around it by using Memturbo and avoid the patch.

The Patch...broke more things than it fixed...and that's being kind. Avoid this big time...

AI problems....

The AI refuse to use Radar.....thereby making their Radar missile shots ineffectual. They do fire AA-10c's they just don't illuminate the target. Since they don't use radar they are easy pickings. My Aim-120's are mighty....

Though not in service at this time...the R-77's (AMRAAMSKI) would be a terrific addition to the enemy arsenal. (At least the fight would be more fair). Mind you once the AI get into IR range bad things happen to human pilots. (Ed. Note: Tame those bad boys by opening the doctrine2.txt file in your falcon4/campaign/SAVE directory and changing the last line from 40.0 to 30.0).

SAMs also seem very timid. I can sometimes fly over the Front Lines and not see a single missile launched. SA-7 Squads have a deathwish. I know I would launch something if I saw a F16 rolling in to attack me, and I certainly wouldn't give him multiple tries at my carcass!

As for ATC... the Air Traffic Control lady has snakes in her head, and she blames F16 pilots and therefore she is attempting to kill us all. Look left and right and make sure the runway is clear.

My Wingman is very unhappy and lacks a certain fire. Maybe I won him too many times at poker. Anyway, he likes to watch me get my butt smacked. May we have some help.....? They also need to be a bit more aggressive in ground attack, or we need to know the definitive method to make them attack.

AWAC'S guy is related to the ATC lady, he likes to send me off on 600mile chases, and he never likes sending help. I picture him Smoking a huge Joint talking garbage with the Snakes in her head lady. He is somewhat useful so don't ignore him, you just have to catch him when he isn't stoned.

The Debrief screen is a bit inconsistent. Some figures will even disagree on the same page. The attempt is terrific and the Interface is fine, we just need better numbers.

The good stuff....oh yea give it here.

Choices up the butt......sorry to be vulgar but I love that word. CHOICES DAMMIT. Let me play this game the way I want to. Falcon doesn't force you to play it my way, you can configure virtually any aspect of the sm.

The Flight model. This almost ranks up in the brilliant category. Not that it isn't brilliant, but against the campaign, well... Great flight models have been done. The feeling of flight is enormous, and this from a dedicated Flanker fan! Learning how to land will consume you.

This might be the first sim that actually forces you to think in terms of flying a real plane instead of a video game. Even dear old Flanker gave me the impression that the landings were fudged. I have a track of me doing barrel roll touch and goes, surely that's not possible....! But as in all things some quirks exist in Falcon's flight model. Stalls have a semi scripted feel to them. But that's really picking the nit.

ACMI...this could have made it into the brilliant category except they left out two important items: no hud view and you can't take over the flight. Someone at MPS should have been a Flanker fan. Combining these two mission recorders would have been incredible. The best feature for me is the one button recording. Anytime during a flight just press "F" button and you are recording. The wireframe is also terrific.

Mission editor....being able to construct my own war is an enormous advantage. This mission editor is almost as notable as the campaign because in large part it is part of the campaign. It's possible with the mission editor to construct a war of your own. Naturally since you potentially have the possibility to deal with a large theatre some groupings of units has been done.

While attempting to construct a mission to use as a benchmark I discovered the power of the mission editor, I dropped a few brigades of tanks from both sides down a line, added some flights of ground attack from both sides, some air defense and then added my flight coming in at 200 feet....the amount of action was astounding, with the tanks manuevering for shots, G2A missiles, G2G missile and all immediately attacking each other and MOVING. This is probably the reason for the grouping of the units for the AI this will bother some, but most hardcore mission designers will appreciate it.

Unfortunately they won't appreciate the Mickey Mouse GUI. Major points off for not adhering to the Windows standard for GUI's in the Mission Editor. Developers, I understand why the main part of the GUI must be uh....game oriented.... but those people that need the "features" of a game oriented GUI probably won't ever see the Mission Editor. Please take a look at the Visual Basic interface and style mission editors like that. Pretty please?

Mission Planner...my my my...some great things here. Mouse over text on units, right clicking menu's that are context sensitive, actually extremely excellent. Points off for not having the clock visible while I have the map expanded. Yea I can pick nits with the best.....

Padlock/View systems. Reflections go a long way to helping SA. Too bad they didn't copy Flanker's mini hud....it would have been perfect. As it stands it's a 98 out of 100.

Detailed debriefs. You will know what you hit (you will after they fix it...it's a little broke now). That they have attempted to keep track of this in the maelstrom that is the campaign is laudable. I hope that gets fixed soon.

A pilots log book that keeps track of all the time spent in the sim...(don't let the one who must be obeyed know about that...). All your kills both on the ground in the air and human online are tracked....as well as all your deaths. Campaign statistics are tracked as well as your ace factor which could be used as something of a handicap. Great stuff .....

The Brilliant...

The campaign, boss the campaign...!! Truly this part of the sim is excellent even while broken. Imagine a WAR... ground troops... tanks all moving to either attack or repel attacks. Imagine having to worry about supply... it's all here.

This sim simply sets the standard for others. Excuses from this time on are gonna be hard to hear, especially if the bugs get worked out. The combination of an already terrific Flight Model coupled with an awesome dynamic campaign is scary. Couple those two items with a detailed debrief, recon photos of the targets, BDA, a pilots log book and it's their competitors nightmare. Add a Complex mission editor, mission planner it makes you wonder why the other developers just don't quit and start making RPG's.

The closing: What to Say?

Falcon 4 has arrived and the little boy that is inside of me is very, very happy. I am aware of the bugs. And yet since its release I have only played Falcon 4. It's truly remarkable.

I will go against conventional wisdom here and say that if I just consider myself and not some abstract philosophy about not releasing a buggy sim to the general public I'm delighted to have gotten Falcon 4 when we did. It was the absolute best Christmas present I have received this year.

Some have become extremely self rightous and claimed that we have some duty to only accept un-buggy games. I wonder if we would ever have any games with that standard? Certainly they wouldn't cost 50.00 dollars and most certainly they would take forever and be feature limited. No sim yet has been released bug free, and probably no sim ever will be.

Sometimes for hours on end I will sit in my room with my War in the Box and try to fight the good fight against desperate odds. This is the first sim that I have had that I've not used the time acceleration - not once! I have hand flown each and every mission no matter how long. I don't need terrain following radar cause I love flying my Viper into the melee and back below the limbo stick. What more can you ask for......?