Silent Thunder: A-10 Tank Killer II Review

It's puzzling that Sierra is known by so many for its cute quest/fantasy titles filled with loads of swords, sorcery, and love stories. Well, put all of that completely out of your head--Silent Thunder is a wicked, clean, no-B.S. combat sim with enough options and realism to hold the serious gamer's interest, minus all the mind-killing, rudder-twiddling minutiae which is the bane of so many otherwise fine combat simulations. (Silent Thunder also has one of the shortest, meanest cinematic intros you are likely to see in a Sierra title.) Employing Dynamix' Terrain and 3DSpace technologies, Silent Thunder sports astoundingly smooth, photo-realistic, texture-mapped terrain and structures which are among the finest I've seen outside of location-based flight sims. The challenging continuity of campaign games can be found here as well, and the redbook audio soundtrack is well worth the extra install space required. The brutish, lethal A-10 has captured the attention of the computer war-gaming public in recent years, and if you're part of that public, Silent Thunder is the game you want to check out.