First you ripoff a 15 year old game. Then you break what you ripped off. Welcome to the wonderful world of F-24.
Well, I don't know if Absolute Entertainment still exists, but if it does I think it needs to sue Majesco. F-24 Stealth Fighter is a complete and total ripoff of Turn and Burn. The gameplay, the scenario, it's all the exact same. The only difference? Turn and Burn is a much better game than F-24 could ever hope to be.
So why is it such a massive ripoff? Well, lets start you off with the gameplay. You start off launching from your aircraft carrier by powering up the engine and launching from your aircraft carrier. You then go into the air and engage enemies. You can choose which enemy you want to engage specifically by pressing select, taking you to the AWACS screen which lets you choose your target. This is also how you deal with mission specific objectives. For example, in one mission you need to destroy an enemy destroyer. You choose the destroyer from the AWACS screen, fly to where it is, and then you cut to a new area where you're flying towards the destroyer. You need to destroy it then by firing at it's weak-points, which can be determined by either it glowing (such as an engine) or it shooting at you. You then fly back to the carrier and land. For Novice difficulty the takeoffs and landings are automated, for Ace difficulty, they're all manual.
Ready for it? Everything I just mentioned in that last paragraph is a direct ripoff of Turn and Burn.
The takeoff process, how you engage your enemies, your weapons selection process, the AWACS screen, how you engage mission specific targets, landing process, all of it is taken directly from Turn and Burn. Except, this time it's done poorly.
For example, the controls. The A button is fire. The X button is to select your weapon. The Start button is pause and the Select is to go to the AWACS screen. The d-pad controls pitch and banking. Got it? Well here's where it gets wonky. The B button controls your speed. Press B and the up arrow to increase speed, B and down to decrease. It kinda makes sense, but it renders you completely immobile when changing speed, leaving you wide open for taking a missile in the tailpipe. Both L and R are to look behind you, L over your left shoulder, R over your right. This is simply ridiculous. Why couldn't these buttons be used for something more productive, such as the ability to yaw left and right? Or, if you insist upon not allowing the player to yaw, how about making L and R control the speed and have B look behind me? That way I could maneuver and change speed at the same time. Think it can't get any worse? How about this wonder: the Y button arms and disarms your weapons. Think about that. Try as hard as you can to think of any situation in an arcadey flight sim where you would want to not be able to fire your weapons. Can't think of any? Neither can I. Majesco, you've got some explaining to do.
And the gameplay itself is terrible. Want to engage enemies? After all, dogfights are the core element of the gameplay. Well, good luck. Without the ability to yaw you'll be banking left and right like a maniac trying to pull off a good shot. Or you could just use a missile. These things go beyond heat-seeking. Every time I fired a missile at an enemy the missile would miss the MiG, do a complete circle, and hit the enemy on the second pass. At this point a little animation of a plane getting hit by a missile and exploding appears where your radar is. Just like in Turn and Burn. I also need to ask the question why on earth on Ace difficulty that this super advanced F-24 Stealth Fighter (which by the way looks exactly like the F-14 Tomcat) can only carry one of each type of missile? And with two missile types this leaves this ultra-high tech aircraft with exactly two missiles. And these aren't super modern missiles. No, it's the AIM-9 Sidewinder and the AIM-7 Sparrow which have been in use since the 1950's. That's a real crack team of engineers you've got there, eh, Pentagon? So after you use your two godly missiles have fun banking your way to a clean shot.
The same sticky missile effect goes for you too. If an enemy fires a missile at you, you'll have a heck of a time trying to shake it. Your only real option is just bank hard in one direction and keep doing that for around 15 seconds. That usually shakes it, sometimes it takes longer though. You'll know if a missile is on you due to a little screen that pops up under your radar showing behind your airplane and if the missile is tailing within a tracking cone behind your tailpipes. Just like in Turn and Burn. And then there's changing weapons. You can tell which weapon you're using by a small bit of red text on the top screen. However, it's hard to read, making determining what weapon you're using a complete pain. And the mission specific enemies are horrible. The weak-points are hard to see due to the small screen of the DS (who would've thought targeting a small target on a small screen would be a problem?) and even harder to target due to the games yaw-less controls.
And then there's landing. If you're playing on Ace difficulty, good luck. You can follow all the directions to land ("Too fast!" "Left!" "Up!") and still plow into the rear of your aircraft carrier. And then guess what. That's right, you have to do the whole mission over again!
That's all I'm going to say about this game. I won't even get started on the interface (Sparse menus and cluttered, useless layout), the presentation (good luck figuring out what your mission really wants you to do), and the graphics (another thing taken straight out of Turn and Burn).
Actually, I take that last bit back. The takeoff and landing sequences have 3D animations that go along with them. However to say they're bad would be an understatement. The pilot, for example, looks like a lightbulb with a screw poking out of it trying to look like a facemask.
Simply put, this game is not only terrible in every regard, but it is a blatant ripoff of a game that simultaneously 15 years older and infinitely better. It's bad. Really bad. So bad I gave it a lower score than The Great Waldo Search.
Do not buy this game, do not contemplate buying this game, do not even buy it for $2 as a gag gift for a friend. The only interaction I would recommend with this game involves fire.
To summarize: this game is ****ing terrible.