Repetitive game play, mindless robotic missions clubbed with dated graphics & lot of feeling at unease with the cockpit

User Rating: 4.2 | Comanche 4 PC
By kreig_jones | Review Date:
I first read about Comanche 4 in a magazine where it was used for benchmarking GeForce 4 series (the Ti & MX series). The realistic ripples & near perfect reflections in the water impressed me so much that I became its instant fan & longed to play Comanche. When I bought my graphics card I got a demo of Comanche 4 with it. It played extremely well & was really fun to play. I really longed to play the real game but couldn’t find one in our locality. So after almost a yearlong wait I finally got my hands on one. I was so freaking happy. I installed it and started playing. I got through the tutorial mission. It was ok at the beginning but I continuously kept losing track of my guiding chopper. When I went over to play the real missions they were far from what I expected. None of them played like the Demo. All of those were extremely short missions only prolonged by a devilish scheme by the developers.
A scheme? Yes. They let no saves in the game. There’s always an actual mission, which is hell tough. You have to go through it at least 20 times to successfully complete that thing. But the real glitch is elsewhere. Before these heavy missions you have to face smaller missions, which really depletes your health & softens you up for the next harder confrontation. Not only that, but these side missions also takes an amount of time which is lost for every failed attempt & continues to add up to total game play duration. So if it had taken 5 min for the hard mission X 10 attempts ~ 1 hour of play to complete the mission but include the side missions, say total ~ 8 min X 10 attempt ~ 1 ½ hour of play. It’s really frustrating to fly over & over again to the same thing. The game lacks the real element of a good game – FUN. And for the first time it seemed that demo’s are nothing but what trailers are to movies. Real thing is far from being what it looks in the short preview.
I would recommend everybody to stay clear of this one.
Finally some words about the graphics need to be said. The reflections are truly great, the ripples are great but the overall feel is that of Desert Storm with slightly revamped graphics nothing more. The terrains are similarly bland & blocky; the objects seem to float (no shadows) & cockpit views stinks blocking the view in every possible manner. The Desert Storm was fun to play so we ignored its graphics but Comanche 4 fails to deliver the goods. It seems it uses the same engine as Desert Storm does. If you really want to play a flight sim go play Crimson Skies, you won’t regret it.
These sum it up: -
1> Repetitive game play
2> Mindless robotic missions
3> Dated graphics
4> Feeling of unease with using the cockpit HUD
5> No saves
6> Very little prospect of using stealth. It’s almost always visible to the enemy. Can’t hide such a large object can we.
7> Lot of practice need to master the game.
8> Extremely short missions do not allow that luxury.
9> The toughness of the missions results in long, boring game play that drags you along.

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