Multiplayer 

I have saved my personal pet favorite feature of any sim for last. The Multiplayer link takes you in the UI for game setup. Note that if you have not chosen a type of connection for multiplay in the SETUP menu, it will ask you here upon mission start. However if you want to CHANGE that selection, you will need to go back to the SETUP menu to do so. It only asks if the SETUP screen is blank and once you enter anything here, it changes that as well. 

Multiplayer has 6 different scenarios: 

• Free for All (self Explanatory) 
• Red vs. Blue (self explanatory) 
• Red Defends Area B-17 (simple base defense, I believe there is a typo in the description on who defends what, but the title says it all) 
• Blue Defends Area B-20 (same as above, with the same typo) 
• Blue Carrier Strike (basic carrier defense, land based training carriers used)
• Red Carrier Strike (same as above, only reversed) If you look at these scenarios, really there are only 4, with 2 duplicates. 

Maximum number of players is 4 so you can have 2 teams of 2. This is as close to cooperative play as you will get. You cannot play any of the missions in multiplay. This has always been a long-standing complaint of mine in the Graphsim line up. When the original Hornet released, I could see the reasoning behind wanting to limit multiplay. Even though there were sims out at the time doing it very well (and even by todays standards some of those sims are still quite robust), their concerns with networking, coding and stability were valid. In 2003, this should be resolved and the cooperative feature added. There are so many strong points about OIF that this one single feature could make it a serious contender in the very competitive flight sim genre. Couple that ability with the already solid and flexible mission builder, and you could have a Prince if not a serious contender for King of at least the carrier ops based flight sims. I still find the lack of this feature a serious black eye for any currently released simulation, particularly with the proliferation of broadband and on line squadrons all looking for sims to fly. Some people may say, you can coop since you fly 2 on 2 … lets be honest, do you really want to fly the same mission over and over again with only 2 people to a side with only Air to Air combat? No, I really didn't think so. 

Multiplayer is able to function via four different connection types: 

• Internet TCP/IP Connection for Direct Play 
• IPX Connection for Direct Play 
• Modem Connection for Direct Play
• Serial Connection for Direct Play 

Unless I am mistaken, this has not changed at all since Hornet Korea. 

Mission Editor 

The mission editor must be accessed from out side of the game. Not a big deal. And once you are in the mission editor, you are rewarded with a very well designed and thought out user interface. The overall package is easy to use and flexible. As with the original Hornet Korea, you can expect a huge number of missions on the web from this sim. The ease and clean simplicity of the editor will allow for fast mission creation. 

Now on to the other aspects of the game.

Graphics 

One of the major selling features of OIF is the satellite imagery maps. Over a gig of your hard drive space will be taken up with these terrain files. I had some difficulty at first. I expected … well, more. Understand that we are now flying over Iraq, and most of the area modeled is FLAT SAND. Sand for the most part is pretty featureless, especially from the air. When you fly low with "terrain noise" that is associated with pretty much every sim, it is less than impressive. I ran OIF on a GF4ti4600 as well as a 9800 Pro 256 meg video card. Graphics were pretty similar on both cards. Every detail maxed out (which in reality in OIF is just one setting) and running at 1280X1024 in 32 bit color, the over all graphic quality is good, but not great. Exterior plane views display "jaggies" even at this higher resolution. As you can see from the two screen shots below, A having no FSAA applied, B having 4X FSAA applied, there is a pretty big difference. On the other hand, most sims out today have issues with HUD symbiology being legible. Even at 4X FSAA, the HUD was clear and clean. 

 
A                                            B

Over the mountainous regions of Iraq, the high altitude view of the terrain is truly spectacular. As you reduce the altitude, as the series of pictures below shows, the terrain becomes less and less stellar. As you get down to "mud moving" level, it gets rather uninspiring. Graphsim explains the terrain detail this way: 

"Remember that we represent a VERY LARGE geo-specific terrain, which restrains terrain texture resolution as the game already requires over 1 GB on your disk. The advantage is high realism -- you can fly almost anywhere in the database and see what is really there! Terrain elevation are actual -- most of Iraq is indeed quite flat." 

While I completely understand this statement, I personally think it would have been wiser to make the area smaller and the detail higher. As it is now, you never want to leave your perch at Angels 25. 

The cockpit retains it very clean look.  It appears it may have been cleaned up some, but that may just be better video equipment. As previous releases, the dash is clean and easy to read. And as mentioned earlier, even with FSAA turned un, the screens and HUD are easy to read.

As with previous releases, HK and PSF, the other object models are incredibly basic. Everything other than your aircraft in the sim is very polygonal and bland. Even though there is satellite imagery for the terrain, the rest of the graphics are still very dated and not much better than the 3Dfx Glide version of Hornet Korea some 5 years ago. To be perfectly honest, I think the airfields in Hornet Korea are nicer. Maybe because the surrounding terrain is sand now, but even the buildings and such are just BLAH. Even in comparison to PSF, not much has really changed here over all except the terrain visuals at high altitudes. 

The caveat here is that this sim will still run on what many today consider "sub standard" machines. A 1Ghz system should be able to run this simulation fine at reasonably high settings. Unfortunately I do not have access to a system close to the recommended specs, so I could not tell if these specs were accurate. As with previous Hornet releases, FPS is locked to a max of 20, so even on my P4 3.2 Ghz with a 9800 Pro, it was going to get no more than 20 - just like a 1.4Ghz machine. The great "FPS LOCK EQUALIZER". This is not a bad thing. 20 FPS is fine. Runs very smooth and looks good and helps keep CPU overhead requirements on lower end machines down. 

Game Play 

The real question here is, how much fun is it to play? Hornet Korea when it was released was a fun sim to play solo. Game play and balance were good. User missions available on the net were able to increase the fun and longevity of this sim for a long time. For quite a while, it was THE sim for carrier ops. Most of the bugs that appeared NOT to have been addressed in PSF seem to have been taken care of here. Missions included with the sim seem well thought out and detailed. Briefings, maps and notes help prepare you for what you are about to face. Missions are not too long, not too short. They seem a little sterile, but the original missions felt that way to me as well. Missions are a bit longer than they used to be, so that is a plus. 

Flight model of this series has always been top notch. There is no reason to change that apparently and it still has a great feel and you get a pretty good sensation of flight. I still think that gun tracking in the HK series is the best of all, and OIF is no exception. 

There really is no campaign to speak of, just separate missions. These missions if played in sequence give you a bit of a feeling of a campaign as you advance closer to Baghdad, but in reality are nothing more than a bunch of missions with no real relationship to each other. Six years after initial release, this should have been addressed, much like the Cooperative Multiplay issues. Today, these features are a requirement for any successful simulation. 

Conclusion 

So, lets bottom line this. Operation Iraqi Freedom is marketed as a follow on of Hornet Korea, not a new game. It is priced appropriately for what is basically a re-release with some enhancements as well as a new theater of operations. Well, nearly new. Operation Iraqi Freedom takes Hornet Korea back to the original middle eastern theater of Hornet 3.0.  I don't have a copy of Hornet 3.0 anymore, but it appears that the area encompassed is very similar, but larger now. It has retained and built upon its strengths from the past. Unfortunately it has not addressed those glaring weaknesses that have been a thorn in the Hornet line since it's inception. 

New players, particularly those on lower end systems, will be pleased with the game play, difficulty and immersion this sim offers. They may be more than a little disappointed regarding the graphics when they see other games on the market that are older, run on lesser machines and look better. Even the satellite imagery is not enough to save this. It is a very nice feature and looks decent at high altitude, but it is just no enough when the aircraft modeled will frequently be at low level for attacks. 

Veteran players, particularly those fans of the HK games of yore, will more than likely enjoy this as a solo endeavor. They will get to fly in a familiar aircraft with very familiar behaviors and flight modeling that they grew to love. They will get a whole new theater to explore and combat in. Most will overlook the graphics warts or the lack of a campaign. Most folks that have fond memories of flying HK solo, may indeed have the same enjoyment from OIF. 

Mobile users will be pleased since this game should run on most laptops. The ability to trap a few carrier landings in OIF while flying around on business trips or extended family vacations will keep even the most stalwart sim fanatic from "jonesin'" until they get home to their real sim systems. 

If you read my conclusion on PSF, you pretty much know I felt that was even over rated as a coaster. I do not feel that way with OIF at all. It offers enough new features, fixed some old issues and is priced and marketed appropriately. It is a great entrance level simulation as well as a nice trip home for fans. OIF will not set any records for innovation and still is not up to the current feature list that users come to expect from a sim released today. As I felt in '97, the lack of cooperative missions is the nail in the coffin for this sim. That single feature could take a mediocre simulation and make it a great one. Toss in a campaign, even a branched campaign, and it would be on par with the bests sims on the market today. I would rate OIF as a mediocre to fair release. Operation Iraqi Freedom should fair reasonably well in the low to medium level sim arena. Hopefully the funds from OIF will allow Graphsim to start to work on an all new sim from the ground up.

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