I never played F-19 - not because I didn’t want to but because I could never get hold of it as a youngster. I used to stare at the adverts longingly. The kid in me wants to pick it up, the adult in me fears it will be too badly aged to get any fun out of (and a childhood ideal will be revealed to have feet of clay). Opinions welcome!
I think if you approach it knowing it’s a very 1987 game from a UI perspective, you’ll be fine. It’s gameplay still, to me at least, as engaging now as it was then.
Don’t look at me like that, it’s my own thing, not like your classic Flight Sim Follies.
Meh, it’s good, but not as fun as F-19, in my opinion.
ANCIENT SIMS WORTH GETTING
Anything by Dynamix. Unfortunately, only Red Baron is commercially available. Aces Over the Pacific and Aces Over Europe, along with A-10 Tank Killer 1.5 are out there and easily found (especially if you know the right people).
Gunship 2000, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0, PAW: 1942, F:14 Fleet Defender are all Microprose sims and commercially available. European Air War, the best Microprose sim, isn’t.
EF: 2000 and Total Air War are benchmark sims by DiD.
And if you’re still into big-ass pixels then you can get Falcon 3 (Gold) for a song over at GoG.
These will keep you busy for over a decade.
Hey, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best, like I did from Gordon with the Follies ;)
I’d also add anything by Digital Integration, like Tornado, Apache and Hind, to Scharmers’ fantastic list.
This. And DI’s (as Razorback) swan songs of Apache/Havoc & Commanche/Hokum.
All are available at GoG except Tornado. Some poor yot out there actually got a hold of Tornado’s source code, but didn’t know how to code. All the calls he put out for help went unheard, sadly.
You know, I should probably post this: http://www.migman.com/
I’m still disgustingly sad about this.
Thirdwire’s Strike Fighters series is still available. I really liked it, since no other sims allow you to see fighter aircraft evolution as clearly. It’s also a good compromise between sim/“arcade”, and pretty fun to play.
That said, it’s no longer supported AFAIK, and it’s somewhat expensive. Still worth playing in my book. I have them all.
https://store.thirdwire.com/mygames.php
EDIT: I’m getting SSL errors at the store. Trying to find out what’s going on, but it’s possible that the games are no longer sold. :(
As a newbie who has played both games for the first time this past month, I share @BrianRubin’s opinion: you need to not care at all about graphics as a prerequisite (I am lucky on that front) and while F-117 looks midly better, besides that, I think that F-19 is better fleshed out in its details.
Also, to get a bit technical, F-117 needs to be played at a very low cycles count in DOSBox to be accurate (the same count, around 3500, as F-19), which results in a much lower framerate than the older F-19 over populated areas! If you want smooth frames in F-117, the AI will simply practically stop working, taking out the suspense aspect of the game which gives life to it.
Anyway, F-19 is a fine game, but it relies on an older concept to keep you playing: the chase for score. There is no dynamic campaign like in the title @scharmers recommended, nor a story based ones. I spent about 6 hours playing over a dozen of missions in F-19, and I see me playing a little more (chasing those medals!), but not much more.
Microprose’s Knights of the Sky had a similar score chase elements, but the campaign also features a progression in time which made it more absorbing than F-19/F-117’s. I really like Knights of the Sky a lot, for all its faults ;)
Thirdwire’s forum is gone as well, not even linked any more. I can imagine that TK has finally, after long last, washed his hands of the PC sim world, and is focusing strictly on his mobile titles.
If this is the case, then there might be people out there who know where you can get it if you really want it.
I’ll probably be playing more space tyrant.
It’s a cut down game with some really annoying design decisions and you can cheese it BUT the simple gameplay cycle has its hooks in me.
The same thing I play every weekend - Red Dead Redemption 2! But this weekend, in 4K!
For me, this weekend is gonna be all about Forza Horizon 3, Guild Wars 2, 3030 Deathwar Redux and Ghost Recon Wildlands, most likely. In that order, I think.
Freakin’ schweet! What 4K TV Did you buy? I’m playing at 1080p on my Panny Plasma (among the last ones made, sniff) and it already looks amazing.
Went with the LG C8 after doing a fair amount of research. Hoping it turns out pretty great!
So I am playing Dark Souls 3, again.
Questions…
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The new Fallout 76…what is it?
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I saw on Steam that apparently Fallout 3 and Windows 10 don’t get along. Is that true? I keep thinking I will buy it during one of the holiday sales, but not if the DL’d version has problems. I already have it on disk and could play it with an older PC.
Sooooo good that! Ill never forget twaring down the fjords in that.