F29 Retaliator

Title		F29 Retaliator
Game Type	Flight Sim
Players		1
Compatibility	ECS (AGA patch available)
Submission	angus@angusm.demon.co.uk

Review
Few games have been so eagerly anticipated as F29 Retaliator. I remember
thumbing through my copy of The One gazing adoringly at the gorgeous terrain
that the aircraft was flying over, thinking, �Yes, yes, yes!� The wait was almost
unbearable, a kind of foreshadowing of the TFX fiasco if you like. More
adverts, more Work in Progress reports, and more �Real Soon Now�
comments. Finally, though the game was released, and I happily handed over
my 30 quid......
Lots of games have a few bugs, particuarly the 3D ones, but as long as they
remain playable, I try not to get over excited about it. F29 had it`s share of
bugs, including a glitch in the compass sprite that I`d of thought they`d have
spotted, but this was not my main gripe. The thing is, F29 was probably a
generation ahead of the competition in terms of the quality of the 3D landscape,
and the speed of the screen update, and until you actually played it, that was just
dandy. On playing it though, you began to see how DID had secured their
apparent advantage. The ships in particular moved in a very jerky fashion,
making a course change of perhaps 30 or 40 degrees in a single frame, far from
the smooth animation we`d expected, but for me the absolute pits was the
collision detection. Imagine a beautiful island set in a sea of turquoise, the pae
blue shallows splashing about the golden beaches, the island itself dominated by
a majestic mountain. You`re in the coolest fighter aircraft on the face of God`s
Earth, whaddya gonna do?? Obvious, innit, buzz the mountain, screech down
there in your warplane and introduce a few bunnies to the dubious joys of the
sonic boom! Wrong. Because although the mountain looks like a very tasty
mountain, the computer sees it as a cube, it presumably makes the game run
faster if the collision detection is that much less complex. Result: Splat! Please
insert disk one. Your joking? Nope, I`m afraid not.
There maybe a  lot of fun to be had with F29 for some people, but I`m not one
of them. Foolishly I believed the hype and bought the game on the strength of it.
The inevitable result was I hugely disappointed. Sigh.

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