FLANKER 2.0


Russian to battle at mach 2

By JAMES ANTHONY

Just how wrong can a person be. Over a couple of decades this military history buff has always sneered at the Russian military as being ill-equipped, unrealiable and hardly cutting edge, technology wise.

It's sheer size has always been frightening. Any nation that can put together so much armor and so many aircraft and troops at any one point has got to be looked at warily, but in terms of quality, sorry miss, wrong house.

Two classic examples of the Russian military giant being over confident of its own abilities have been against tiny nations with very little in the way of technology - Afghanistan and Chechnya. The latter is particularly small and yet despite massive efforts by Moscow still continues, albeit by the fingernails, to hold on.

Recently, however, the it's-Russian-so-it's-crap attitude took a big change in direction when hopping into the virtual cockpit of an Su-27 Flanker. Hmmm, the writing was still in Cyrillic, but the techno wizardry of one of the world's best fighter planes was pretty damn impressive.

Even more exciting is the gameplay, which can have you up zooming about some of the best visuals your eyes have witnessed. In fact, the graphics in Flanker 2 are probably the highest quality yet provided for a flight sim. Terrain rendering is excellent with buildings and ground units looking exceptionally sharp and detailed. Flanker 2 has a huge number of missions to fly, as Russia, Ukraine, USA or Turkey, and you can mix and match planes to get either the best jet to fly or the best plane to fly against.

There is, of course, the Su-27, the Su-33, MiGs, Tupolevs, Illyushins, F-14s through to the F117 stealth fighter bombers and A-10 Warthog ground-attack craft. For added adventure you can pick C-130 transports or B-52 bombers to take on and it has to be said knocking out those monsters with cannons only is one heck of a lot of fun.

Flying the Flanker is reasonably easy to pick up and with the manual open on the desk you you can pretty much get started straight away. That's on the simpleton level, of course, and you can make life as difficult for yourself as you need to. While air-to-air combat is the mainstay of any flight simulation, the addition of other types of mission separates the very good from the must buy. With Flanker 2 you not only get a host of air targets to take on, but also the game serves up ground units, radar sites and shipping for you to set your sights on. And, the beauty is that the graphics are so good you are not just blowing blocky shapes into smithereens but very well rendered about-be-atoms.

Get stuck in to trucks, armoured personnel carriers and trains, or go naval and pick on patrol boats, cruisers, missile platforms and carriers. Flanker 2 covers just about everything you would want to do or blow up in modern air warfare and is extremely good value for money.

ORIGINALITY 80%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 95%
PLAYABILITY 90%
ADDICTION 90%
ENJOYMENT 90%