What our customer's say!"The best dogfighting sim of it's era", Should I review a 1999 flight sim that 4 people are going to buy? Sure, there's nothing good on TV tonight.
Mig Alley as you are probably aware portrays the air war above Korea during the Korean war of thhe early 1950s. 5 aircraft are available to fly. The P 51 Mustang, the F80 SHooting Star (Anerica's first jet) the F-84 Thunderjet, the F 86 Sabre and the Mig 15.If you've played modern jet sims like Falcon 4 be aware that these early jets are very different. Handling is a different challenge; whereas a the F16 flies so smoothly that it *feels* like you're playing a computer simulation, the early jets require much more finesse to fly. Push it past it's limits and it will either stall, or go into a dangerous spin. Apart from the way the jets physically behave, the avionics...well they didn't have any! Except for a rudimentary radar ranger for gunsights, which you'll rarely use. As a brief simplication the planes in Mig Alley are like the prop fighters of a WW2 flight sim but with considerably more engine power available. The sense of those jets behind you churning out 1000s of pounds of thrust is quite exhilarating compared to the more sluggish props and you can aptly throw the plane about the sky more than any WW2 sim you've played. The Mig 15 in particular has a great climb rate.
Although there are 5 planes to fly, most players will want to play with only two, the F86 Sabre and the Mig 15. The other planes are primarily ground attack planes, and ground attack isn't what most people who buy this are looking for. While modern ground attack is a complex affair of munitions, avionics and terrain following, the ground attack of the early 1950s is no different from WW2. Fly to the target area, point you nose at the ground target and fire away. Fun for a bit maybe, but the air to air dogfighting is where MIg Alley really shines. The F 86 and MIg 15 follow the classic tradition of "boom and zoom" that is to say one plane is faster and has a more powerful engine at the expense of maneuverability (here the Mig 15) while the other has a weaker engine but is more maneuverable. Here it's slighly more complex still; the Sabre has an extremely quick roll rate (360s degrees in 2 seconds) making it a very agile target (or hunter) in the short term, while the Mig 15 has a slow roll rate, but a higher *sustained* turn rate. There is a large difference in ammunition too, the Sabre uses high velcoity machine guns requireingl ess "lead"(or aiming ahead) at the expense of little damage inflicted, while the Mig 15 fires powerful cannon that can do terrible damaage, but the much slower muzzle velocity means that much more lead is required, making scoring a hit much trickier than with the Sabre. The thrll of dogfighting in Mig Alley is quite amazing considering that its "only" a computer game. I first got into modern flight sims with Janes's WW2 Fighters, but Mig Alley managed to top even that with sheer "Keep in my sights you @*!$!! Keep it there...gotcha!!" immersiveness.
Ohter good points- the sensation of flying is amazing. Although the green and brown Korean landscape lacks the glamour of, say, European farmland or Pacific atolls I can't think of another flight sim of it's era that gave the sensation of flying so well. A good way to measure it is to pick the view 45 degrees either left of right, then do a slow roll in that direction while looking at the landscape. Mig Alley nearly gave me vertigo with that. Another thing that sets is above most others is a dynamcic campaign (here called The Spring Offensive) In fact the campaign goes above most others in that not only is it dynamic, but you can order your squadrons of planes around on the map just like a wargame.
Situational awareness is I'm pleased to say,good. There is an artificial horizon in the top right of your screen at all times, and the relation of other planes to you is shown on a circular cross section. You can tell not only in which direction a plane is, but if it's above or below you too. Good for telling if your being tailed by an ememy. Such aids are not too unrealistic if you think about it, since in real life your situational awareness is much greater and second nature to you. There are number of padlock views available too, although these may be initially confusing. With a bit of experience though, you'll be able to have all the confidence you need in a multi plane dogfight.
Criticisms? Well the manual is practically useless. Okay ,many people don't read the manual, but still, I do, and was disappointed at how little information is given for so many words, and how haphazardly it's laid out. Giving power equatiom curves with fancy graphs is all very impressive but I would have preferred more info on how to play the campaign. There is online help but how many people read that stuff? For such a strong feature of the game, the campaign is frustratinglly difficult to get into. ALso, navigation when flying is somewhat mysterious. There is a map, but getting to waypoints really should have been explained a bit more. Also taking off informatiom can be exhasperating with collions turned on; I eventually had to change the collisons to enemy only.
Some people have complained about system crashes and such. Well I have never experienced anything like that with the patched version. MY PC is quite old by todays standards but to give an indication it's
Windows ME
1.3 Ghz
NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX video card
Creative Audigy (1)
With those specs, I have had flawless system performance.
Overall I feel that Mig Alley is a great simulation of a surprisingly overlooked era. Maybe it's due to the subject matter. The Korean War lacks the heroics of the WW2 good guys vs nasty Nazis or the cutting edge avionics of modern sims. But if you have tried and enjoyed sims like IL- 2, I recommend Mig ALley with no hesitation, in fact in some ways I think it's actually the better simulation
"Get a life", This game is perfect!!!!!
i hate it when i read that kids review! they want it easy!!!! back then it wasn't like that!!!! and that guy saying " WW2 sims are better because they have a lockon key" Hey stupid in real life there was no lockon button so live wityh it!!!!! Our men who fought up there had no problem with it!!! okay!
THIS IS A GREAT GAME SO DON'T THINK UP ANY STUPID PROBLEMS LIKE THERE'S NO LOCK ON KEY! OKAY! LIFE IS NOT EASY AND BACK THEN IT WAS MUCH HARDER!
"I don't care what anyone says....this is a Great Sim !!", Unlike some people I think the flight modeling is quite good. The two swept wing fighters are fast but poor in maneuvers. The straight wing fighters maneuver well in a dog fight but lack speed. The MiG has a superior rate of climb but flies like a brick at low altitude. The only flight model criticism I have is that in the game the Sabre is more prone to tail spins than the MiG. This should be reversed, In reality the MiG was more prone to tail spins due to it's high vertical stabilizer.
Damage modeling is also quite good with the MiG destroying most targets in under 3 seconds. They have even included the poor gun site effect for the MiG because the MiG was known to have a poor site in real life. With all flight model effects turned on, the Sabre is quite a challenge to fly, however from what I have read I think they may have over done it's instability a bit.
For a 5 year old game the graphics are quite good ! Some of the sound effects are a little weak but I have replaced the sound files I didn't like with mods found on the web. I love the "blackout" effect, it forces you to lay off the stick a bit. Force Feedback support is also quite good.
Campaign mode seems to have a bit of a learning curve but i'm sure once I get the hang of how it works it will only add to the realism of the game. The radio chatter is ok for the most part however I can't stand how the wingman always seem to scream GET HIM LEAD !! POUND HIM ! every time you jump on an enemy 6. It's quite annoying to say the least. Ground pounding also has a few issues. Finding ground targets in MA is like looking for a needle in a hay stack.
I have read some of the less than flattering reviews for this sim on Amazon.com and I must say I disagree with the negative reviews. Mig Alley is a fine simulation of air combat during the Korean conflict. I has features that will please casual users as well as "hard core" sim nuts. Give it a try, it's worth the 20 bucks. Just remember to add the latest developer patch and the BDG patch.
"The flight sim that could have...", First, a caveat - when I tried this sim on my P4-winXP, it wouldn't respond to joystick inputs. Even when re-calibrating in-game (which just sends you to the WinXP control panel), and downloading the official patch failed to help. With a 3rd party patch I realized a mixed blessing - I could now fly the sim well enough to realize how good it could have been if not for some serious flaws. While I haven't determined which of these problems were endemic to the pre-patched game, they mirrored the same problems I'd found on the Empire Interactive/Rowan game "Wings of Gold", a promising WWI sim. "MiG Alley" (MA) was one of two sims that appeared in the late 1990's dedicated to the Korean air war - the co-called "forgotten war". World's apart from "Sabre Ace", MA was still bedeviled by horrible bugs, again eerily recalling WoG - graphics re-draw (in which the program will re-draw the next graphics frame w/o fully erasing the previous one - reminding you that you are in fact looking at graphics and also making for a more psychedelic experience than you'd expect in a military flight sim), numerous freezes and the all powerful CTD (crash to desktop)! Bugs aside, MA reveals an uncompromising sim from a developer with a uniquely uncanny choice in its subjects, one obviously designed for the serious aviator (WWI sims were on the decline when WoG appeared and remain eclipsed by sims based on WWII Europe; "Flight of the Intruder" remains not only of the most demanding hardcore sims of all time, but one of the few that focused completely on Vietnam. USNF '97 graciously included VN among its otherwise blandly generic missions. "Strike Fighters" included Vietnam War-era planes, but had them fighting a fictitious war in the mideast).
In MA, you fly single missions or in segmented campaigns in the Korean war, a comparatively short though bloody war in which fortunes seemed in constant flux (from the North's initial overwhelming of the US-backed South, to the allied landing and break-out at Inchon, to the entry of red China). Your choice of aircraft is extensive, but also limited to USAF assets (meaning that there's still room for a sim that has you flying FJ-3, F-9 and Corsairs from aircraft carriers, ala "Bridges of Toko-Ri" and "Men of the Fighting Lady"). You'll fly the F-80, America's first true combat jet (and the winner of the first all-jet dogfight), the F-51 Mustang (the legendary prop-fighter of WWII now out of its element flying strike missions and CAS), the early F-84 (a straight-wing jet fighter later designed with swept wings, but not in time for Korea) and of course, several versions of the F-86 itself. Though you get to fly the MiG-15 (a fighter based on the Focke-Wulfe Ta-183 prototype designed by Kurt Tank for the Luftwaffe near the end of WWII), the sim makes it clear where your attentions are devoted (i.e., there are no careers for flying Yaks or Lavotchkin fighters). Each of the plane's are wonderfully distinctive: like the real thing, the game's F-84 is bedeviled by its non-stabilator tail and non-swept wings, but its stability and resilience to damage will reward the faithful; Giving Mustangs the ground-attack missions that should have been tasked to the P-47 (a Mustang contemporary of WWII that was actually an ancestor of the F-84, and possessing, for a prop-fighter, the same stable flight performance and better able to absorb damage) was probably a bad idea, but Rowan uses the inclusion of any prop-fighter to highlight the sensation of their jets - the Mustang of this game is hardly the dumb-downed jet of "Sabre Ace", but so retains the nuances of that prop-fighter that you have to remind yourself that you're not over wartime Europe; the F-80 is the perfect jet for beginners - neither so agile that it's inclined to spin, nor so stable that you'll find yourself wrestling with the controls while trying to anticipate enemy fighters; the ultimate experience of course is the F-86, which will definitely spin if given half a chance, and will likely spin if given any chance. All allied aircraft share the flaw of being outgunned by the MiG-15 (which carried a rapid firing cannon against the machine guns - inadequate by WWII standards - lofted by our planes).
Combat is challenging at every level - there were no HUDs in Korea, so just finding your targets is akin to impossible (the game "allows" a semi-3d scanner reminiscent of the one in the X-Wing Fighter games; echoing the "Air Warrior" series, the game also features dots alongside the edges of your screen hinting at the location of fighters both friendly and otherwise). Realistically, aircraft appear as fast-moving specks on the horizon, then as blazing stars (likely the sun bouncing off that aluminum) and only into fully realized airplanes once they're practically sitting on your hood. Apart from the combat, flight is also a challenge, but a rewarding one (not even downing MiGs is as empowering as saving your plane from a spin - just remember to ram the nose down, lateral neutral, and use full rudder opposite direction of the spin). The campaign mode is also interesting - allowing you to choose how deeply you want to control its course. Unsurprisingly, the campaign mode has the most promise, requires the most attention and suffers the most from the game's inclination to CTD. In the end, I just had no patience to fly the same mission over and over again, knowing that a CTD would set me back to square one. So much of this sim went unrealized, but I've kept it around, if only for its instant action, a few minutes of some of the most demanding and fleshed out air combat I've seen on a computer, and the saddest sign of what could have been the best flight sim of all time.
"bad", This game is a dissapointment. But when I bought it I wasn't expecting much. The controls are terrible. How could anybody read the cockpit instruments? The grapics are ok but the pixelation isn't all that great, the worst part as that this doesnt have training. If you want a good sim get USAF.
