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Mar 12, 2011 THIS VERSION IS OBSOLETE. DON'T DOWNLOAD THIS VERSION. GO GET v4.61. (sheesh, people? I need to put up a big bold highlighted flag saying to look for the latest version?) At last, for your enjoyment. The latest version of FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD has arrived. V4.5 may be just a 0.5 version bump, but there. . mod falcon 4.0: falcon bms 4 Adventure Legends ? Click on yellow background text to download rip version or on red background text to download iso version.
Overview
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a game. It’s a sim. Microprose has packed quite a lot into its comprehensive simulation of the F16 Falcon. Indeed, they should have. After 3+ years of intense development, Microprose rushed the sequel to its Falcon 3.0 classic into stores just before the 1998 holiday season. Discussions continue to evoke both joy and frustration throughout a cautiously hopeful sim community, as the can’t-live-with-it, can’t-live-without-it theme becomes more and more apparent.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
![Engineering Engineering](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125338880/786611283.jpg)
In no way can Falcon 4.0 be compared to an arcade flight game. There are no exaggerated explosions, no futuristic weapons and no corny AI voices (well, maybe a few). There is nothing theoretical about Falcon 4.0’s weapons, avionics or flight model. Every component of Falcon 4.0 attempts to emulate the real aircraft -- and at a fraction of the cost, I might add! By tweaking a few interface knobs, the game can be dumbed down to an easier level of play depending on the pilot’s flying abilities and social life.
Falcon 4.0 lacks no feature. A few of the big ones that come to mind are dynamic campaign, mission builder, cooperative multiplay, active cockpit, excellent graphics and an accurate flight model. Falcon 4.0 is the first sim to tout all these features in one package. One has to applaud the aggressive development team at Microprose.
What’s the problem, then? The features are many, but not all are in perfect working order. The bugs are too minute and too numerous to mention. Besides, the bugs are rapidly crawling into Microprose programmers’ pesticide. It is true that Falcon 4.0 is getting better all the time, but the casual simmer may want to wait until all the fixes are in. Patch 1.07 is expected in June 1999.
Falcon 4.0 sports Instant Action, Dogfight, Tactical Engagement and Campaign over the entire nation of Korea. The terrain is vast, the weapons are many, the battle is now. In Campaign mode, the pilot interacts in an AI-controlled, real-time air/ground war. In addition to gaining air superiority, pilots must stop advancing enemy ground units by cutting off their supplies, blowing bridges, crippling infrastructure, etc. The outcome of the campaign is affected by player performance.
Graphics
You won’t see very many sims flying circles around Falcon 4.0’s graphics. Pilots can expect to see a similar look as European Air War, but with much more detail, especially in the terrain and cockpit. The same brown palette tints the screen of both Microprose titles. The widespread interest in Falcon 4.0 so far has yielded several custom cockpits and other user replacement art downloadable via the Internet.
Audio
There are a variety of quality sounds in Falcon 4.0. Taking a peek into the game’s sounds directory reveals 11 individual impact sound files, 11 bomb sounds, and tons of cockpit and other sounds. The diverseness is refreshing after flying so many sims with a single sound representing gunfire or bombs or engine noise. The effort to mimic real-life sounds is a big plus.
System Requirements
Minimum: Pentium 166 Mhz, Windows 95/98 with DirectX 5, 32 MB RAM, high color graphics 800x600x16-bit high color, 4X CD-ROM drive, 175 MB free hard drive space, joystick, DirectX-compatible 16-bit sound card
Recommended: Pentium II 266 Mhz, Windows 95/98 with DirectX 5, 64 MB RAM, 3D graphics accelerator (Direct 3D or Glide), 8X CD-ROM drive, 400 MB free hard drive space, joystick with throttle, DirectX-compatible 16-bit sound card
Multiplayer: null-modem serial cable, Windows compatible 28.8kbps modem or faster, or local area network with TCP/IP protocol
Documentation
I don’t normally get too excited about documentation, but the 600-page manual may be the most thorough in gaming history. Get ready to stay up late at night with a highlighter.
Bottom Line
Falcon 4.0 is a powerful PC simulation with boundless potential, but no matter how good it looks on paper, one hesitates to let his guard down and plunge into a sim that isn’t quite ready. Virtual pilots will have to wing it until the final fixes are in. I feel sure that Microprose will not rest until its bird of prey flies high. When the wings of Falcon 4.0 are completely mended, watch out!
Overall rating: 8
Platforms: | PC |
Publisher: | Hasbro Interactive |
Developer: | MicroProse Software |
Genres: | Simulator / Flight Simulator |
Release Date: | 1998 |
Game Modes: | Singleplayer / Multiplayer |
The second best way to fly an F-16.
After years of development, Falcon 4.0 was released to the public just a few months too soon. It possessed a double personality disorder almost certain to inspire a love/hate relationship with consumers. Still, despite the delays and the flaws, and after some subsequent patching, Falcon 4.0 had truly become a virtual fighter pilots dream and the definitive F-16 simulation.
Between the environment, flight and systems modeling, Falcon 4.0 can stand on its own as a full-featured general aviation sim. The radio alone features two tuners which are independently switchable among six different communications nets as desired. The terrain engine itself is outstanding for a combat sim, offering a remarkable sense of speed as well as graphic detail not entirely unlike Flight Unlimited 2. The flight model feels intuitively accurate, featuring a wide variety of phenomena such as six degrees of inertia and an honest appreciation for the effects of mass and drag. Most airports are faithfully modeled after their real-world counterparts, right down to their individual flight operations procedures, taxiway paths, and parking areas.
In all, Falcon 4.0 is the deepest, most complex air combat sim yet. True to the real F-16 Fighting Falcon’s multi-role capabilities, Falcon 4.0 offers a wide range of mission types, including fighter sweeps; escort missions; airfield and interdiction strikes; naval strikes; support of ground troops; suppression of enemy air defenses; and reconnaissance. To be effective, you’ll have to learn to use the air-to-air radar (four modes, each with its own sub-modes), air-to-ground radar, HARM and Maverick targeting systems, laser targeting pod, and about 20 different weapons.
If all of that sounds like too much, it’s possible Falcon 4.0 isn’t for you. On the other hand, there’s a good-sized group of gamers out there who drool at the prospect of a sim this complex and involved. For them, Falcon 4.0 will be a dream come true – for everyone else, the designers have included several options for toning down the realism until it’s nearly arcade-easy. A supplemental Cadet’s Guide explains how to play the game at the easiest levels in just 40 pages. For more advanced users, the manual goes through all of the details of piloting the F-16.
But it’s worth learning to play the game the way it was meant to be played – at maximum realism. That’s when its real-time, dynamic campaign system really shines. As in DID’s legendary Total Air War, a session with Falcon 4.0’s campaign begins with a list of missions currently available and lets you choose the one you’ll fly. Unlike TAW, the campaign in Falcon 4.0 includes a ground war that changes to reflect the success of the air war — and it lets you fly co-operatively with friends.
The campaign also creates the greatest sense yet of playing a small but important part of a huge battle, rather than being Rambo in the sky. You can see and hear the air battle unfolding through radio chatter, and you can often see the results of the ground war in distant explosions and dust clouds. In fact, it’s pretty exciting just to put your plane under control of the Combat autopilot (the same system that handles all the computer-controlled planes), turn on invulnerability, and activate the Action View, which automatically switches between external views to follow the most interesting events on the battlefield.
Falcon 4.0 joins the likes of Longbow 2 and Jane’s F-15 on the very short list of amazingly big, deep, and complete air combat simulations. If you’re a hard-core sim fan with the hardware to handle it, you need this game.
System Requirements: Pentium 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Win 95
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