Published by Infogrames; Developed by DiD
Reviewed by Cat91 on 7/28/00

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First Impressions:

Hi, combat flight fans! The Cat is back with the August look at her favorite flight sims. This review grows out of a brief exchange I had with Valery Blazhov (I apologize, Valery, if I spelled your name wrong) at combatsim.com shortly after we published our Flanker 2 review last month. In a nutshell, I was asked for my view on what "women" want in sims. (For the record, I support one of our (male) editorial writers, who recently wrote that developers should consider not what a specific race, or gender, wants, but what the players of a certain genre want.) When answering that question, I kept returning to two sims I have loved that offered unequaled playability AND easy accessibility to the novice, yet were stunning at the time for their level of realism. In 1996, I had the fortune to pick up a copy of a classic of combat flight called EF-2000 version 2.0, by Digital Image Design, Ltd., our heroes in this story. It offered a total battlefield simulation centered around an aircraft of the near future with glass-screen avionics and the most modern weapons available. I loved the game, and when I heard that a successor was in the works waited anxiously for it. Total Air War was that successor, and I feel the sim community needs to take another look at it while we wait for the suits to wake up and get with the program again.

In 1997, the game debuted as F-22 Air Dominance Fighter with a scripted campaign set in the Red Sea operations area. It proved to be a comprehensive guess regarding the soon-to-be-deployed American F-22 Raptor fighter, sporting stealthy, radar-avoidance features and powerful combat systems. It was great but lacked a decent changing campaign and mission editor, killing replayability. DiD promised that an add-on would be available to correct these deficiencies. A year later, however, the add-on turned into a new, stand-alone game, outraging many DiD fans, including me. But my craving outdid my righteous anger, and I sunk forty bucks into the game. Sadly, due to what many call corporate mismanagement on the part of Infogrames, DiD disappeared, never to be seen again after this game. Its legacy lives on in Typhoon, the third installment of the package started with EF-2000 and now in the hands of Rage PLC, who own DiD's assets today. No one knows much about Typhoon, it is shrouded in the utmost secrecy. We do know that it is supposedly due for a 2000 release, is based on much of the gameplay of Total Air War, and is the descendant of DiD's legacy. Was Typhoon's parent all that? Let's see.

Graphics and Test System:

As one can see from the screens at right, the graphics stand up well even in this day of 32mb dedicated graphics memory and hardware accelerated transform and lighting engines. DiD's greatest strength was in this area, and TAW includes an industry first in its implementation of volumetric 3d clouds. These are more of a clear-day haze at medium altitude and TAW has no real weather implementation; however, it is obvious that greater things were planned. One problem with the terrain tiling is obvious at high altitudes: the terrain tiles are often mismatched, and seams show clearly in some areas. This is offset by an innovative approach that makes towns and trees look almost bump-mapped in certain views. Night lighting is impressive for its day and pretty, if tactically unsound. The stars are visible in the sky, and under the beautiful full moon, one does not have to use the well-implemented night vision goggles to see at night. Aircraft are readily recognizable, and all the AI aircraft have observable on-board weaponry, something many current-day titles lack. Ground units are sparsely detailed but recognizable enough to be identified as what they purport to be. DiD did make one large boo-boo; they model BSU-49 parachute retarded bombs...without parachutes. I brought that to their QA department's attention in 1998 and recieved no answer.

Other things one can see include lens flare from the sun, something only DiD had for years and an innovative, easy to use camera that allows the pilot to watch ongoing air battles in real time, while her bird proceeds on autopilot. Also, DiD paid attention to such details as the sun reflecting in certain ways off your in-cockpit instrument cluster as you maneuver, much like Jane's F/A-18's dynamic lighting does today. Quickdraw techniques are employed that update the cockpit multifunctional displays constantly and give access to a fantastic wide-screen cockpit at the press of one key. The only graphical glitch is the fact that LANTIRN images do not draw on the Attack MFD when in the wide field view. This was obviously another oversight, as one can display the LANTIRN image on the center IRST panel and it DOES draw in the wide field cockpit. The explosion graphics are not spectacular and could have used work. When I see things hit by bombs I wanna see 'em BURN LIKE MAD! Even if it ISN'T realistic. All-in-all, Total Air War stacks up against the current-day competition pretty well in this department.

Sound:

Total Air War models sound well overall. Pull the trigger to fire a missile and hear the BAM! as the shotgun cartridges fire to separate the weapon from its pylon. AMRAAM missiles drop away from the aircraft, then ignite and streak away with a missile-like WHOOSH! as do Mavericks and Sidewinders. There are several different types of explosion sounds, though they are kind of "poof" sounding, and not earth-shaking BOOMs for the most part. The 20mm Vulcan cannon sounds a little anemic from the cockpit, not like the horrific "Zipper" should sound (I've heard the real thing in real time), but ZSU-23-4 cannon sound as mean as they really are. Doppler effect in sound is modeled and gives the pilot situational awareness. There are only five voices, all male except for the pilot of the KC-135 tanker. The air traffic control is this drunk-sounding, vaguely Middle Eastern man. And the lead American pilot sounds about eighteen, and muffled. His wingies range from a muffled Texas-sounding man to generic Midwestern, and not a woman in the bunch. Confusion is rampant in large scale air battles; you have to listen close for your call-sign or else you won't know who's talking to whom, since the AI AWACS controller has the same voice YOU do unless you're flying for the Saudis. Other than this, I find the sound acceptable.

Gameplay and Enjoyment:

I give TAW the highest mark yet for gameplay. Why? Consider that The Holy Grail for modern-day combat flight, multiplayer aside, is accessibility to the novice, without compromising realism. Of the modern day jet sims, Falcon 4.0 came closest but missed the brass ring with the fact that it needs dedication for total enjoyment; the fault of the aircraft modeled rather than the sim itself. Overall, Comanche v. Hokum is the closest to capturing DiD's legacy with its advanced helicopters, real-time dynamic campaign and easily scalable settings. But let's get back to TAW, and what it does best.

Avionics do most of the job, and the F-22 is state-of-the-art. The DiD team all had military simulation backgrounds. Using Lockheed's non-classified material, they made a VERY educated guess as to how the F-22 would work. From demos of the F-22 cockpit I have seen, they came closer to getting it right than any other F-22 sim. The F-22 is designed to be a member of an INTEGRATED combat system. The American "Link 16"/ NATO Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) are both parts. Raptors can link to EW radars and to AWACS and airborne JSTARS ground scanning radars, and to each other, building a picture of the entire aerial battlefield. Situation awareness is a whole new ballgame. You see every bird in the sky and every target on the ground, identified by AWACS/JSTARS. You see your wingies' radar pictures, and your on-board computer identifies enemy aircraft by their radar emissions and radar cross-sections. IFF is integrated seamlessly into the system so you don't whack a good guy. The Raptor driver can flick a switch on her HOTAS and use the phased-array APG-77 radar to build a shoot-list of priority air targets, and engage up to eight almost simultaneously. She can use JSTARS input to assign ground shoot-lists to her AGM-65G Maverick missiles. The lone aircraft's systems limits were modeled in TAW. You will really appreciate the AWACS/JSTARS/EW/wingman links after a few sessions.

Another area that many virtual pilots flamed DiD for: the ground part of the campaign engine was nonexistent. No ground war? I blame this on a couple of things. Consider that the dynamic DiD campaign engine known as WarGen II was the first ever real-time dynamic campaign. DiD broke ground here. They did well, but were not perfect-WarGen was a work in progress. The designers made a choice, influenced by the Gulf War and U.S. Air Force General John Warden's "Five Rings" air war strategy: they only modeled a limited air war. Total Air War is not the kind of game where the virtual pilot will find herself embroiled in a huge war a-la Falcon 4.0. And the missions tend to get a bit repetitive. The Rage Warrington team working on Typhoon, who count among them many of TAW's original designers, painfully remember this and swear they'll counter the problem with scripted events triggered by campaign conditions, and an expanded ground war. That's an innovative, RPG-gaming strategy a-la Diablo II that will reap big benefits if it works as the designers intend.

Another thing I disliked was the need in many of the ten separate campaign scenarios (spread out among west Africa and Saudi Arabia/Yemen) to jump into the AWACS and work as a controller rather than a pilot. The AWACS interface is easy and quick to learn and understand, leaving the armchair general in control of active air assets. Unfortunately, she gets irritated to learn she can't task flights not in the air. That's realistic, but it takes away what the AWACS types want: total control of all air assets. There must be a balance between realism and playablilty.

As good as TAW is in its approach to realism, one thing I really hated: surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) weren't well done. REAL SA-6 systems do not have radars on the individual launchers. The separate "Straight Flush" radar vehicle was not modeled, and the launchers could track and fire independently, making suppression of enemy air defenses dependant on the SA-6 problematic and unrealistic. This was offset by good modeling of ZSU-23-4 radar-guided anti-aircraft guns and of SA-11 vehicles that DO have on-board tracking capability. The limited variety of SAM and anti-aircraft artillery systems didn't feel "real" in the way that Flanker and Falcon do, and since I'm into air-defense suppression, that bothered me greatly. This region favors SA-2, SA-3, and SA-8 air defense systems, all conspicuously absent. And on the Western side the dangerous Roland and Crotale systems are there, but where's the Rapier? And they modeled the Chaparral? I thought only the South Koreans and Taiwan still used those.

Also, TAW models no auto-bombing or dive/toss bombing modes that even the F-16 has today, and presumably a dual-purpose aircraft would have. The F-22 was originally designed with "not a pound for air to ground," but DiD's compromise to get mud-movers in the game was half-done. There is no "target of opportunity" mode, and only one target can be pre-briefed, making more than one a waste of space. The real F-22 is slated to carry the JDAM family; a "target of opportunity" mode (as the real JDAM presumably has) would have enabled DiD to dump the other bombing modes and free-fall/laser-guided bombs, emphasize the air to air role that is the F-22's province, and still let the player use precision guided heavy bombs or cluster munitions.Where the game shines is in the aircraft's envisioned real-life role: air superiority. Situational awareness is unparalleled. In the helmet sight and the color multi-functional displays, the pilot can see and know who is out there, target the most deadly of her aerial foes, and move on. G-limits are modeled, and loss of consciousness from G-forces both positive and negative is present without being obnoxious. The Su-27-like helmet sight allows Sidewinder-X kills from 45 degrees off-center, and the aircraft's electronic countermeasures are implemented better than anywhere but Jane's. Radar degradation from ECM, chaff and flares, Doppler notching, and terrain masking are all present and accounted for. This is also the only game I have ever played where I really enjoyed air-to-air dogfighting.

Multiplayer:

TAW's multiplayer features were primitive. There is no multiplayer campaign, a horrific oversight given the incredible AWACS interface; this would have made TAW the ongoing standard for LAN squadrons. Virtually no TAW multiplayer squadrons still exist, and as the Cat does not DO internet multiplay, this feature was not tested.

Overall Impression:

Total Air War is regarded by most of the combat flight world as one of the classics of the genre. While not perfect, it pioneered many of the features that modern simulation aficionados expect: solid artificial intelligence, realistic avionics for the subject aircraft (within limits), challenging scenarios, a dynamic campaign, and attractive graphics. It was stable out of the box and needed only one patch to correct its most aggravating flaws.

Marketing Efforts Toward Women:

Nonexistent. It seems most U.K. titles I review ignore the presence of women in combat aviation throughout the world. Whassup with that, gents? Developers, it is so EASY to open avenues to give us access to your titles-just give us a voice! THE U.S. AIR FORCE HAS WOMEN COMBAT PILOTS! So do the Russians! So do the Israelis! So do the Canadians! As far back as 1991, y'all. Women were flying combat when TAW was in development. There is no excuse for leaving us out.