Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19129 in Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Model: 51847
• Released on: 1998-03-15
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 95
• Format: CD-ROM

Amazon.com Product Description
Falcon 4.0 is a multiplayer air combat simulation set in the Korean peninsula with a real-time war in which you take the role of a single pilot in an F-16 jet fighter. Falcon 4.0's photo-realistic, texture-mapped graphics and detailed models of the F-16 provide one of the most realistic combat flight simulations available.

GameSpot Review
Nearly five years in development, the Falcon 4.0 that finally hit shelves in December is a bit of a dichotomy. At times, it's arguably the most detailed, ambitious, and realistic depiction of modern air war ever attempted. It's a sim that's so full of details you'll spend weeks making awed discoveries of new capabilities, of minute aspects of war never before re-created in a flight sim. At other times, Falcon 4.0 feels like it's more potential, more promise, than anything else. Bugs, glitches, and performance problems pop up all too often in some areas of the sim, a clear indication that even after all that time, the sim was slipped out the door without enough testing.

So is Falcon 4.0 the second coming of flight simulation or a buggy mess? Alas, it's a bit of both. Sim pilots willing to explore the plethora of options in Falcon 4.0 that do work fairly well, while awaiting the inevitable patches, are likely to find dozens of hours of play here. But gamers who want to be able to try any feature and be assured that it will work properly will want to wait and be sure that MicroProse comes through with its promised patches.

The promise of the sim is evident when you first open Falcon 4.0's package and are greeted by a monster manual packing approximately 600 pages. The more methodical players will want to start with the excellent tutorial section, which features 31 missions designed by F-16 pilot Pete Bonanni.

Of course, if you're more the instant-gratification type, you can skim the concise Cadet's Guide booklet, jump into the setup section, activate the easy flight model, simplified avionics, and exaggerated weapons effects, and dive right into the instant-action mode. With a variety of realism options, Falcon 4.0 is one of those magic designs that can ease a gamer from novice to expert, little by little. (Contrast this to Jane's F-15, which had arcade and expert modes, with little in the way of intermediate settings.)

Along with training and instant-action modes, you'll find dogfight mode, which lets you set up aerial encounters between up to four flights of aircraft. There's also a mission builder for creating your own missions. The heart of the sim, however, is the dynamic campaign. It's here that you may find one of the most engrossing, immersive simulated combat experiences ever. Unfortunately, it's in the campaign that you'll run across most of the sim's current problems.

Falcon 4.0's campaign is set in Korea, with three scenarios that start you with your forces ahead, at a stalemate, or in danger of defeat. The missions here aren't scripted but rather are generated on the fly by the dynamic-campaign engine. This tracks not only the entire air war, but the ground war as well. You'll see (and hear, on the radio) combat in the skies and on the ground around you. That's a big part of the sense of immersion - as you head towards your own target, ground battles are going on around you, contrails are above you, and air defenses are firing at flights miles away. Your actions do affect the outcome of the campaign, but not to an inappropriate degree. Overall, this is easily the most comprehensive dynamic campaign yet attempted, and the missions come across in a very realistic way.Much of what you'll see here will blow you away: surface-to-air missile sites unleashing volleys of SA-6s at attacking F-4 Phantoms, MiG-29s engaging F-15s in realistic air-combat maneuvering, and artillery shelling distant ground forces. Unfortunately, even with the latest patch, you'll also see wingmen returning to base immediately after takeoff, AWACS controllers sending you to intercept enemy planes hundreds of miles off your course, inaccurate post-mission success ratings, and the rare but annoying crash back to the Windows desktop. In fact, if you're going to be playing the single-player campaign, you're better off not installing the initial patch, as the program is more stable and the AI more intelligent without it.

Where the patch does help is in multiplayer mode. In the initial release, it was difficult to make a successful multiplayer connection. With the patch, you're treated to a peek at what has the potential be an amazing multiplayer experience - once the sim is tweaked. Not only can you set up multiplayer single missions and melee dogfights, but you can also have multiple human players take part in the campaign. Players can enter and leave the simulation at will, so those with permanent Net connections can leave the sim up and running as a continuous sever. Unfortunately, there's no matchmaking server available for finding other Falcon players.

The sim does excel in flight and systems modeling. The plane handles in an extremely authentic manner, from the realms of basic maneuvering through the deadly F-16 deep stall. Be warned that with all realism options on, Falcon 4.0 should pose some new challenges for even experienced PC pilots. In fact, despite 15-plus years of sim experience, I broke the landing gear off my F-16 on seven of my first eight landings. All pertinent cockpit systems and switches are modeled, with a full suite of air-to-air and air-to-ground radar modes. The 2D cockpit is "active," so instead of memorizing dozens of keypresses, you can actually manipulate the controls on the panel.

Falcon 4.0 features detailed and convincing graphics, sounds, and special effects. The Korean terrain isn't flashy or vibrant in color, but if you compare the somewhat hazy look with what you see out the window on your next civilian aircraft flight, you'll find the effect is very accurate. Details such as explosions and burning targets (especially impressive during night missions), contrails at altitude, and smoke from factories flesh out the environment. Only the occasional appearance of obviously polygonal fragments or bizarre purple sparks detract from the environment.

Be warned that Falcon 4.0 has sent many gamers scurrying to their local computer stores to buy souped-up hardware. The single and training missions and instant action and dogfight modes will run fairly smoothly on a fast Pentium with 64MB of RAM. But the campaign mode is capable of bringing the fastest system to its knees when visual details and simulation modeling are cranked up. My P2/400 system ranged between 10 and 21 frames per second in campaign mode, compared with 25 to 41fps in dogfight mode. With less than 128MB of RAM, you're likely to see slight pauses during campaign missions as data is swapped to the hard drive.

So is Falcon 4.0 for you? Despite the bugs and broken features, I've been game-locked on this simulation since the day I booted it, forsaking even the WWII sims I'd waited so long for. No other sim has come so close to re-creating the feel of my one flight in a jet fighter. If you stick to the sections that are fairly solid - the training missions, instant action, and dogfights - you'll keep yourself busy for quite a while. And hopefully, by the time you master the plane's systems there, the next patch will be out, and the campaign glitches will be ironed out. (MicroProse's Gilman Louie has committed not only to patching all the major bugs, but also to keeping a team working on the program for up to six months after release to add user-requested enhancements.) But if you're the type of gamer who gets really frustrated when things don't work as they should, you'll want to wait until the bugs are ironed out. --Denny Atkin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Manufacturer Description
Falcon 4.0 breaks the sight-and-sound barrier with its cutting-edge graphics, realism, dynamic campaigns, and multiplayer game play. Only Microprose could offer accurate topographical terrain, detailed radar, and hyper-realistic flight. Falcon 4.0 is a multiplayer air combat simulation set in the Korean peninsula with a real-time war in progress in which you take the role of a single pilot in an F-16 jet fighter. Falcon 4.0's superb 3-D photo-realistic, texture-mapped graphics, and detailed models of F-16 avionics, weapons, and threats provide the most realistic combat flight simulation available. The ongoing simulation of a complex air/land/sea battle, called the Campaign Manager, creates all the tension, chaos, and adventure that exist in modern air combat, immersing you within the game as no other flight simulation has done before.

Customer Reviews

1+ years old and still the best sim out there...............
OK, you definitely need to patch this puppy to the 1.08 version when you install it. But it still reeks of realism, it's something you're not going to be bored of in a couple of months. I still don't feel like I have complete mastery of the sim yet. Time after time, I am humbled by this game. And,as with every undertaking of this magnitude, it's always not going to have 100% stability or the gameplay may fall short of perfection. My hope is that Microprose/Hasbro will continually support this game for the years to come. It could be just that great in a couple more revisions! At less than $20, it's really a steal. The sims coming out right now (like Jane's F/A-18) are not even close to Falcon 4.0 at revision 1.08. Caution: people with no patience for a big learning curve should steer clear of this game. The manual is over 400 pages! You're not going to be an ace within a couple of weeks. Frustration and death are going to be the norms when you are just getting into the pilot's seat!

The benchmark by which they will all be measured
Summary: Fantastic flight model, incredible depth of simulation, amazing thoroughness of detail, beautiful scenery, fairly stable with 1.08 patch. Also, absolutely spellbinding on every level. The only jet fighter simulator better than this is classified.

Words simply cannot express the mind-boggling excellence of this simulation, or my level of satisfaction at finally buying, installing and taking on its challenge.
I'm a real-life pilot with over 2000 hours of small airplane flight time, and I think it's safe to say that I've got about 10,000 hours of "flight" time on classic sims such as F-19, F-117A, Janes WWII Fighters, EF2000, Mig Alley, Falcon 3.0, Janes F-15 Strike Eagle and FS98. I started "flying" on an Apple IIe in 1983, on the original Microsoft Flight simulator with a green screen monitor. Aviation, especially fighter aviation, has been an obsession of mine since I was 6 years old. If your profile sounds anything like mine, the simple truth is that Falcon 4.0 is your holy grail.
In the earlier Falcon 3.0, the people at Spectrum Holobyte pushed the outer limits of what the "casual" PC flyer could learn and do. In creating Falcon 4.0, the team at Microprose didn't just push those limits; they rammed right through them like a Durandal through runway concrete. Be assured, Falcon 4.0 isn't a game. It is nothing less than a full blown recreation of nearly every significant function and capability of the General Dynamics F-16C Block 50/52, and of every sight, sound and situation that the real life pilot of that aircraft would experience in wartime. Name a system, a weapon, a readout, a display, a HUD function, a capability or a feature of the real F-16, and the odds are about 98% that you'll find it perfectly simulated in Falcon 4.0. About the only thing this sim can't do, is yank the blood down out of your brain and make your head weigh 80 pounds, and I'm sure that only budget considerations stopped this world-class team of software developers from finding a way to provide us with that experience.
If all you want to do is ram the throttle forward, punch holes in the sky, and gun down the bad guys without having to think too much, the excellent "Jane's WWII Fighters" is the sim for you. If, however, you recognize that modern-day fighter pilots are the ultimate high performance human beings who combine tactical combat knowledge with the ability to manage incredibly complex airplanes and systems under intense physical and mental stress, and if taking on just the idea of that kind of challenge appeals to you, buy Falcon 4.0 right now before it disappears completely. The sad truth is that this sim is simply too good for 90% of its potential market - the average "casual" PC flyer will open the (very well written) 100+ page manual and feel like a Maverick has hit him or her in the noggin. USAF fighter pilots are some of the smartest, brightest, most over-achieving people on the planet, and to master Falcon 4.0, that's pretty much who you will need to be as well. If you've got what it takes, however, the rewards are here - and I do mean all the rewards are here. Everything. This is as good as PC-based jet fighter sims are ever going to be.
Note: This review applies to Falcon 4.0 flown in Campaign mode with avionics, flight model and systems all set to "realistic." If you just want to turn, burn and heave missiles at things, you can turn all that stuff down to "easy," enter the Dogfight arena, and have a blast! Also, the essential Version 1.08 patch can be found at "falcon4.com"

Give This Sim A Break...
While searching for a good flight sim to add to my library, I read customer reviews of Falcon 4.0 on Amazon.com, was disappointed to see so many low ratings it got, then decided I should give up the 20 bucks to find out for myself.

I haven't scratched the surface of this sim yet as far as missions and AI, although I know what to expect, having flown versions 2.0 and 3.0. I came back to put in a good word for Falcon 4.0. However it seems David Smallwood's review beat me to the punch! I second his opinion....

Let's put it this way: If you're serious about recreating a hyper-realistic flying experience and not just playing a game, this is the sim to get. Granted, it may have been buggy before; I don't know. I downloaded the upgrade only a week after original purchase. It makes it work. Period.

The game is gorgeous, there are scads of infinately detailed switches and dials to set, the flight model is like butta', the views are beautiful, the sounds are terrific, the interface is good and the price is a no-brainer.

And you know what's the best part of this program? These days when you're lucky to get a 6-page installation guide with gaming software, MicroProse assembles the best set of documentation I've ever seen in the classic 'Buy the manual, get the software free' style: almost 300 pages tucked in a 'Squadron Leader Special Edition' three-ring binder with laminated tabbed sections dividers, a separate cadet quick-learning guide, a beautiful reference chart, and full-color map of Korea.... all for the ridiculously low price of under $19.95!

My advice if you're addicted to flight: pick this box up and getcher butt in flight school. It's going to take a lot of studying.

For the record, my PC is a 450MHz, with 128MB SDRAM, an 8MB videocard with Voodoo 2 3Dfx accelerator and MS Sidewinder Pro Force Feedback joystick. With this configuration I can run all the settings at full bore and it's sweet.