What's Good	What's Bad	2.0 out of 5.0
Great concept Good flight model Fair graphics Free with MindSpring subscription	The sound doesn't live up to realism claims Mercenary concept not used to full potential No keyboard reference card No padlock view Limited play options

Have F-16, will travel.

This is the plot of F-16 Aggressor. If this sounds familiar it should. In 1993 Origin released a Chris Roberts' game with a similar twist. The game was Strike Commander and it was the first F-16 mercenary simulator. There was a plot to uncover and bad guys to vanquish. You earned your pay by carefully selecting missions and judiciously purchasing and consuming weapons. This was one of the light sims I cut my teeth on and I remember it with great nostalgia. Naturally, when I heard that Bethesda Softworks was producing a new F-16 mercenary squadron game with an interactive story line, I was intrigued.

The manual is a 200-page book that at first feels hefty, but gets lighter as you read. It quickly becomes apparent that much of the 200 pages is just filler including essays on the finer points of the game and the flight model, an extensive history of the F-16, technical specifications, pictures of weapons and vehicles in the game, basics of flight, a background story and blank note pages. There is surprisingly little substance in describing the functioning of avionics, weapons systems, and cockpit controls. This may be because there is surprisingly little substance in the game itself. Considering the simplistic arcade approach taken to avionics and weapons the pages spent on this may be adequate. It had better be because that's all you're going to get. There is no keyboard reference card, quick reference pullout sheet, or keyboard template. There is only a poorly laid out key summary near the front of the manual.

Many games can survive a mediocre manual so I didn't let this daunt my enthusiasm. The install went well enough which seemed to be a good sign. There is a stunning high quality intro movie that appears to give a nod to Strike Commander by depicting a F-16 in SC like paint scheme leaving a hanger very similar to the home base hanger featured in SC. This tip of the hat is also seen in loading screens that look reminiscent of the SC arming screens. Unfortunately, the polish wears off quickly after the intro.

Some of Aggressor's problems become apparent almost immediately. On my first mission I was unable to hear digital sound. I checked the sound settings and found that 3D audio was checked by default. This would seem appropriate since I have a Diamond Monster A3D sound card with the latest reference drivers from A3D. Just to eliminate possibilities I unchecked 3D sound and tried again with the same results. I finally exited the game only to crash to the Windows Illegal Operation Blue-Screen-of-Death. I tried this several times also trying reboots of my machine, but continued to get the Blue-Screen-of-Death EVERY time. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game with no effect. Finally, after much experimentation I deduced that the proper sequential procedure was to start the game, immediately check, then uncheck 3D sound, quit the game, then restart the game all while holding your tongue just so. Since Aggressor does not seem to store this setting properly you may need to do this each time you start the game, even if 3D sound is already unchecked.

Once I got the digital sound running properly, I started wondering if there was some way to shut it off again. I can't fully express how bad the sounds are in this game. To paraphrase a popular commercial, "It don't get no worse than this." Virtually the only noise to be heard inside the cockpit is a constant unchanging white noise that sounds for all the world like it was sampled from a cheap AM radio between stations. Apparently this AM static is supposed to represent engine noise, but it does not change one iota when the engine is in idle or in full afterburner. In fact, there is no way to tell if you are in idle or afterburner except to watch the HUD. There is no way to set throttle detent points and absolutely no auditory cues to remind you that your sitting on a General Electric power plant capable of 27,000 pounds of thrust. I found myself frequently cruising around in afterburner completely unaware that I was burning fuel off faster than lighter fluid at a barbecue. The one saving grace is that the AM static ceases when your engines go dry. In a sanity saving attempt to flee the static I tried gliding by turning my engines off with the Shift-E key as listed in the manual. This causes sound stuttering or drops digital sound completely for the rest of the mission. It's too bad the setup screens don't let you control the volume level of individual sounds. Sounds such as landing gear, speed brakes, wheel brakes, and runway noise on touchdown are all absent inside the cockpit. Sounds are a little better outside the plane with slightly varied engine noises, but still no great afterburner roar. One amusing note is the laughable voice acting used for "Betty" the voice-warning reproducer.

Anyone who has ever watched the Discovery Channel's "Wings" program knows that the real Betty delivers her warning in a calm, cool, detached tone. A common warning heard when flying too low to the ground is a measured, "Pull Up, Pull Up". The Betty in Aggressor sounds more like a frantic backseat passenger in a carriage with a runaway horse. I laughed out loud when I dove towards the ground and heard her excitedly utter something that sounded like, "Pulla-Pulla, Pulla-Pulla".

Graphically, Aggressor is pretty good. The game supports resolutions up to 1024x768 and looks good in all of them. The game ran very well at 1024x768 on my Celeron 464 with Voodoo 3 3000. The cockpit art and object rendering are especially nice. The terrain is passable if a bit austere. The biggest problem is that while things look pretty decent there aren't many usable views to look around. Situational awareness is poor without even a rudimentary padlock view.

Honorable mention must be made of the flight model. It is surprising to me that so much love and attention to detail went into a flight model that is wedded with arcade avionics. Even more surprising is the fact that there are no difficulty options within this sim to tailor the complexity of fight model or avionics. The designers of Aggressor took a novel approach to flight modeling. Moving your input devices results in virtual control surfaces being moved. The movement of these control surfaces is interpreted within the "full non-linear aerodynamic model". The result is a very realistic feeling plane that bleeds energy, corners at appropriate speeds, and wallows when heavily loaded. This is an extremely high fidelity flight model that seems wasted on an otherwise disappointing sim.

Single player experiences are limited to an Instant Action mode that allows you to control some setup options and a linear campaign mode. It is in campaign mode that I found my greatest disappointment. In a mercenary sim I expected to choose missions by balancing risks with opportunities for financial gain, then use profits to purchase armaments for the next mission. In Aggressor monetary gains are used as a ranking system, but have no real effect on game play since you are not allowed to choose your missions and you will always have enough weapons for the missions you are given. I was also disappointed that the story unfolds in small text mission briefings instead of the cut scenes used in SC. The campaign takes place in four regions of Africa. The terrain in these areas can be somewhat dull terrain, but is more varied then the plethora of sims with campaigns set over the Iraqi desert. Many of the missions start with your plane already in the air, which will be considered by some to be another blow to the realism and immersion factors.

I was unable to test multi-player since Bethesda does not have a dedicated server for Aggressor and TCP/IP games are few and difficult to find. All sim companies should take a lesson from NovaLogic's "NovaWorld" free gaming site or make their products compatible with GameSpy matching software. Games such as F-22 Lightning 3 can be played over the internet by connecting with a single click of the mouse. Perhaps with a feature like this F-16 Aggressor would have a chance to break into the market.

Bethesda claims that "F-16 Aggressor is the closest anyone outside the military will get to experiencing flight in the cockpit of an F-16 Falcon. No other combat flight sim comes close to the real Falcon's sophisticated fly-by-wire system." They might have a valid claim on the flight model, but nearly all other areas of this sim pale in comparison to the excellent F-16 simulation seen in Falcon 4.0. F-16 Aggressor impresses me as a great concept that was never realized. Maybe they can put this flight model to work in a better product in the future. If the mercenary aspects of the sim and been well done or the missions more fun there still might be something to recommend. As it is, the only way I might be able to recommend Aggressor is if you're looking for an ISP. With a six month subscription to MindSpring the game is free.