I Wouldn’t Kiss Her Fatwa With Your Lips!
For those whose lips curl into a sneer and whose eyes have become accustomed to focusing down your nose at the mere mortals who enjoy their ‘arcade piece of crap’ because the F-4E lacks the correct number of rivets on the splitter plate, you may stop reading here.
For those of you who think the Strike Fighters: Project 1 engine is an awesome product that enables to recreate every possible air combat theatre that ever occurred (along with some that haven’t), then press on.
The basic gameplay hasn’t really changed significantly. There are three basic campaigns, covering the highlights of the Israeli Air Force, the Six-Day War, The War of Yom Kippur, and the 1982 Israeli actions in Lebanon. The historic representation of you and your enemies are surprisingly detailed for a simulation touted as being ‘casual’. The basic mission set hasn’t expanded to include anything new, but there are some very noticeable improvements.
One of which is, and this will thrill fans of the series, the enemy pilot AI. I had it set to “Normal” something happened to me that hadn’t happened in very long time. I got cashiered twice by the enemy and on one mission, the enemy flight I was sent to intercept managed elude me before I even got within missile range.
With every patch, the enemy AI seems to be getting more and more motivated to kill me, and this is the kind of progress we want to see. I believe at some point, someone came up with an “UberAI” mod for the series. I don’t think it’s going to be necessary anymore.
The aircraft you will be familiar with. There are about five versions of the A-4 Skyhawk, plus the Phantom, the Eagle, the F-16 Viper, the Mirage III, and two homegrown aircraft, the IAI Nesher (Mirage 5) and the IAI Kfir C2.
I always end up with a favorite whenever I go through the stock installations of Third Wire sims, it just happens that way. In this title, you might see through most of my screenshots that I spent more time in the Kfir C2 than anything else. An elegant bomb truck with countermeasures, this bird seemed to just feel ‘right’. It didn’t hurt that I could carry Pythons and thus could shoot in the lips anyone trying to prevent me from attacking my target and then turn around and finish my mission.
