Strike Fighters: Project 1 Preview

It was pretty scary there for a while. After the collapse of Electronic Arts' Jane's division a few years ago, the flood of flight simulators that had been going strong for almost two decades turned into nothing more than a trickle of a few mediocre or repurposed games. It seemed as if this once proud and healthy genre would follow in the footsteps of adventure games and go by the wayside. But there have been signs of life. Microsoft is continuing to develop its Combat Flight Simulator series, and the third game from that franchise is looking very promising. Ubi Soft has enlisted the help of the developers of Flanker and will soon be releasing the visually impressive Lock On: Modern Day Combat. Even the king of all flight sims, Falcon, is getting a sequel next year from Texas-based G2 Interactive.

In fact, it's pretty safe to say that the genre is alive and kicking. Take, for example, the forthcoming Strike Fighters: Project 1 from Strategy First. The game will be the company's first flight simulator ever, and it's being developed by a brand-new developer, so why are armchair pilots within the flight sim community so excited about its impending release? Many reasons, but the most important one is that the developer, Third Wire Productions, was founded by Tsuyoshi Kawahito, who was the lead designer on Hasbro Interactive's European Air War and who also worked on Jane's Longbow 2, a game that's widely regarded as the best helicopter simulator ever created. But there's more to Strike Fighters' appeal than its pedigree. The game is set in the 1960s, an era when jet technology was still relatively young, and dogfighting was undergoing a renaissance period. You'll pilot planes like the F-100D Super Sabre, the F-104 Starfighter, the A-4 Skyhawk, and the F-4 Phantom and do combat with the likes of MiG-17s and MiG-21s.

Strike Fighters: Project 1 underwent a short-lived name change earlier in the year, when it was called Rolling Thunder, which is the code name for the restrictive three-year Vietnam bombing campaign that started in 1965 that was intended to persuade the North Vietnamese to enter peace negotiations with the United States. From that name alone, some might have assumed that Rolling Thunder was to be a historical-based combat flight simulator that focused on this three-year period of the war with Vietnam. In truth, however, the overarching plot and campaign structures for the game, which was renamed back to Project 1 a few months ago, are completely fictional and not based on the events of the war. In fact, we've been playing a beta build of the game, and we noted that the campaign for Strike Fighters doesn't focus on Vietnam at all. Instead, the game is set in the Middle East during the volatile 1960s. Though details of the plot behind the campaign are still sketchy, we do know that massive tank battles and naval conflicts will ensue throughout the region, and you'll be tasked with flying a number of different sorties, including combat air patrols, escorts, and ground support missions, over this constantly waging war. Additionally, you won't be relegated to the role of fighting only for the US side, either. Project 1 will let you play as a mercenary pilot, and you'll have to worry about keeping your bottom line in the black by choosing how to spend your pay wisely. You won't have to pledge allegiance to any one nation as a mercenary, but the cost of making repairs, buying new ammo, upgrading old parts, and so on will come out of your pocket, not Uncle Sam's.

Even though the game will let you get behind the stick of only four US aircraft, the current beta let us test-fly almost all of the aircraft in the game, including the game's dozen or so Soviet bloc fighters, bombers, and cargo planes like the MiGs 17, 19, and 21, as well as the Su-7, Tu-22, and the bulky An-12. And in addition to the US strike aircraft in Project 1, there were also a handful of bombers and support planes like the versatile C-130 and the B-57. The flight model in the game seems to be very true to the respective aircrafts' avionics. Most of the planes of this era are sluggish, and while many aircraft back then had no problem attaining speeds well beyond Mach 1, they required a heavy hand to get them to turn, loop, dive, and do anything else that doesn't involve flying in a straight line. So far, the game captures that essence perfectly. Smaller jets like the MiGs and the A-4 are in fact quite nimble, while the heavy F-4 and F-100 are noticeably more unreactive to your control inputs. Heavy aircraft like the C-130 and An-12 are especially glacial in their maneuvers.

That's not to say that Strike Fighters: Project 1 isn't accessible. Anyone with a passing knowledge of flight simulators will be able to step inside the cockpit of the game's four jets and be able to hold his or her own quite capably. The game automates a lot of the tedious tasks involved with aircraft of that era, like cycling between targets or selecting different ordnance, for example. For those who do have a penchant for a demanding and realistic game, however, Project 1 will undoubtedly satisfy. The game's impressive graphics engine renders gorgeous 3D cockpits, extremely detailed plane models, and expansive maritime and mountainous terrain with ease. Additionally, the designers at Third Wire have promised to make the game completely open-ended and customizable to the end user, and that's something that's crucial for creating a strong community following. From what we've seen of the game so far, we've no doubt that it will garner the following that it deserves when it releases this fall. We'll have more on this promising flight simulator as that date approaches.