Israeli Air Force

Rating:
Summary: dissappointing
Review: This is a mini-survey sim based upon a partial history of the Israeli Air Force. Unlike its famous namesake, Jane's IAF is actually a light-weight survey simulator (allowing you to fly a range of aircraft rather than focusing on any one of them, like "Jane's Longbow", "F/A-18" or "F-15"). It's pretty tame stuff, with simple missions and fairly generic flight models. Graphics and gameplay fall somewhere between the earlier Fighters titles ("ATF" and "USNF '97") and the superlative "WWII Fighters", though the sophistication falls closer to the old games than the new. Terrain modeling is pretty lackluster - as you'd expect, terrain becomes more pixilated and less attractive the closer (lower) you fly, something flight-simmers like me have had to deal with since the days of "EF2000" (an older game with dramatically lower system demands). On my WinXP machine, the program was unresponsive and buggy - and that was on the menus!. In fact, just flying IAF reminds me of the experience I have when I get a new computer and I dust off some old games that proved too demanding for my older computer, but are clearly out-stripped by the power of the new one. Between the bugginess of the menus and the lackluster flight model, IAF looks like a product hurried out the door.

Starting no earlier than the "Six-Day War" (1967), "IAF" skips much historical ground. Admittedly, it's a bit much to expect a sim to cover everything from the pre-jet combat (of the sort that typified the "Independence War" of 1948) to the era of cutting edge-technology that developed the "Lavi". (Maybe they could have done a series, but who would want to buy a game in which all you fly were gun-armed Piper-Cubs and Dakotas, and which the only real fighter was the horrendous Avia S-199? On the other hand, they could have had an edition that started with those early days and culminated in the Sinai war of '59, with its Mysteres, Vampires and Venoms, an aspect of military aviation history overlooked by flight sims.) However, the sim also overlooks much of the IAF in its choice of aircraft - no Mystere, Vautour or Ouragan. You get to fly the Mirage-III, though it's the only flyable plane offered for the watershed '67 war. You get 2 different models of the Phantom (a legend of a fighter also overlooked by many sims) yet not a single Skyhawk, which was the IAF's workhorse in the Yom Kippur war (1973). You get the Kfir (an Israeli built, unlicensed copy of the French Mirage, yet powered by the General Electric J-79 engine), F-16D, F-15 and even tosses in the Lavi. For multi-player, you can fly either the MiG-29 or the MiG-23. The older, more ubiquitous MiG-21 is strangely unavailable (that's like a WWII game without Spitfires or Mustangs), as is the Su-7 - Soviet strike-fighter that roughly corresponds to Republic's F-105, and saw much action in 1973.

Everything about IAF's premise looks rushed, as if the idea of a game based on the IAF was enough to carry the game. It's not. By now, any system can fly this game. Those in the market for a survey sim but lack the horsepower to run "Lock-On" might consider "Jane's USAF" instead.

Rating:
Summary: dissappointing
Review: This is a mini-survey sim based upon a partial history of the Israeli Air Force. Unlike its famous namesake, Jane's IAF is actually a light-weight survey simulator (allowing you to fly a range of aircraft rather than focusing on any one of them, like "Jane's Longbow", "F/A-18" or "F-15"). It's pretty tame stuff, with simple missions and fairly generic flight models. Graphics and gameplay fall somewhere between the earlier Fighters titles ("ATF" and "USNF '97") and the superlative "WWII Fighters", though the sophistication falls closer to the old games than the new. Terrain modeling is pretty lackluster - as you'd expect, terrain becomes more pixilated and less attractive the closer (lower) you fly, something flight-simmers like me have had to deal with since the days of "EF2000" (an older game with dramatically lower system demands). On my WinXP machine, the program was unresponsive and buggy - and that was on the menus!. In fact, just flying IAF reminds me of the experience I have when I get a new computer and I dust off some old games that proved too demanding for my older computer, but are clearly out-stripped by the power of the new one. Between the bugginess of the menus and the lackluster flight model, IAF looks like a product hurried out the door.

Starting no earlier than the "Six-Day War" (1967), "IAF" skips much historical ground. Admittedly, it's a bit much to expect a sim to cover everything from the pre-jet combat (of the sort that typified the "Independence War" of 1948) to the era of cutting edge-technology that developed the "Lavi". (Maybe they could have done a series, but who would want to buy a game in which all you fly were gun-armed Piper-Cubs and Dakotas, and which the only real fighter was the horrendous Avia S-199? On the other hand, they could have had an edition that started with those early days and culminated in the Sinai war of '59, with its Mysteres, Vampires and Venoms, an aspect of military aviation history overlooked by flight sims.) However, the sim also overlooks much of the IAF in its choice of aircraft - no Mystere, Vautour or Ouragan. You get to fly the Mirage-III, though it's the only flyable plane offered for the watershed '67 war. You get 2 different models of the Phantom (a legend of a fighter also overlooked by many sims) yet not a single Skyhawk, which was the IAF's workhorse in the Yom Kippur war (1973). You get the Kfir (an Israeli built, unlicensed copy of the French Mirage, yet powered by the General Electric J-79 engine), F-16D, F-15 and even tosses in the Lavi. For multi-player, you can fly either the MiG-29 or the MiG-23. The older, more ubiquitous MiG-21 is strangely unavailable (that's like a WWII game without Spitfires or Mustangs), as is the Su-7 - Soviet strike-fighter that roughly corresponds to Republic's F-105, and saw much action in 1973.

Everything about IAF's premise looks rushed, as if the idea of a game based on the IAF was enough to carry the game. It's not. By now, any system can fly this game. Those in the market for a survey sim but lack the horsepower to run "Lock-On" might consider "Jane's USAF" instead.