Review by: Craig Miller
Published: October 20, 1998

The F-16 first took to the skies in January of 1974 and it has been flying countless missions for many different nations ever since. It has been continually refitted and upgraded since that day and is arguably our military’s best made and most long-lasting weapon. It is the most versatile of all fighter planes, housing more ordnance and fuel pods than any other fighter aircraft. The F-16 has a 69-0 kill ratio and average peacetime mission success rate of eighty-eight percent. target=”_blank”>NovaLogic has continued the long history of F-16 simulations with their release of F-16 Multirole Fighter.

Our culture has glorified the fighter pilot in countless movies and books and I have been intrigued by fighter pilots since I was in high school. Over the years I have played a wide variety of flight combat simulations, each one touting itself as being more realistic than ever before. I have spent some major bucks in order to buy equipment capable of running the latest fighter combat simulations. When Falcon 3.0 was released I spent hours and hours playing the game, not because it was ultra realistic, but because it was downright fun. A friend of mine who is a fighter pilot pointed out where the game was unrealistic, but admitted that sometimes realism can be taken too far and can make a game less fun.

With all of that said, I can’t tell you whether the flight model in F-16 Multirole Fighter is realistic or not. I am not basing my review on that criterion. I can tell you that NovaLogic hired John A. Ferigone, who is the chief F-16 test pilot for Lockhead Martin, to test the game. I can also tell you that the game “feels” realistic. I have flown many times before and I get the same sensation of flight from the game, albeit a little less due to that lack of motion cues.

The first thing most people want to see when they fire up a flight sim is how good the graphics are and if the framerate is acceptable. With that in mind, I went into the quick mission option and selected an easy mission. The game loaded and I was greeted with an outside view as the camera rotated and stopped outside my plane. Being stubborn as I am I hadn’t read the manual at that point, and tried a few commands that I remembered from previous flight sims. Within a few seconds I was up in the air flying off into the horizon. The game’s graphics are gorgeous and the framerate on my machine was exceptional.