Comanche 4 - a review

bonkey

I remember the first time I saw the original Comanche. Having been a fan of games such as LHX for quite some time, I was blown away. Comanche was a good mix between arcade and simulation in its "feel", and at the time, it looked supremely pretty. Voxels offered a much better landscape for the style of game than standard 3d rendering at the time did, and it was processor-efficient.

Over the intervening years, the boys at NovaLogic stuck with their voxel technology, which began to look more and more dated. Each release of the Comanche range was less and less appealing. I had more or less given up on it.

When I first heard of Comanche 4, my initial reaction was "oh god, not more bloody voxels". Imagine my surprise when I heard that it was moving to traditional techniques.

As I watched the development progress, I grew warier and warier. The screenies posted looked more like cutscene images than in-game. Someone was pulling a fast one, and I wasnt gonna be suckered.

Then they released it, and I succumbed to the urge. I shelled out my 99 swiss francs (50 irish squid) and took the beast home to have a look.

It installed, and set its graphics "default" to a very low setting, and limited some options having correctly identified my Geforece2 MX card. Right, I thought, ignore those defaults. Turn everything up to high, and set the res to 1024x768. We can always turn things down once we see how slowly it runs.

Then I started playing.

Oh my goodness. They weren't cut-scenes. They were in-game graphics. And my poxy MX card can handle it all at 1024x768x32, (which is as high as my flatscreen will run) with reasonable fps.

Yes indeed - Comanche 4 is supremely pretty. I could rant for hours at just how pretty it is, but I'll limit myself to just one aspect - the water.

The game contains the best water rendering I've seen to date, with no competition. It reflects land, sky, boats, choppers, buildings, and anything else, copmplete with lovely rippling effects. It is semi-transparent, so you can see the ground sloping down off the coastline. The water changes colour as it gets deeper. Its awesome....and its all beautifullly done through use of T&L, so I've no idea how older cards or things like the Kyro will handle it. I can honestly say that this is the first game I've seen which makes serious use of a T&L engine to truly stunning effect. There are probably loads of others....I just havent seen them.

But what about the game? Who cares if its pretty if it doesnt play well.

Good news. Its excellent.

For the early misions you get away a lot with flying low, fast, and going in with all guns blazing if you are even vaguely smart about it. As the game progresses, sneakiness is becoming more and more of a factor. So - perhaps a bit too bang-bang happy, but thats probably just the learning curve on the missions.

The weapons system is simplicity itself. If you have a lock on the target, even the "dumb" cannon and Hydra rockets will fire on target, given that in the real world, the chopper will have on-board computers capable of calculating the lead point for you. You can still miss, based on your movement and/or the enemy not travelling in a straight line.

You dont get that many weapons. You get a 500-round 20mm chain gun, and 6 hardpoints in your bay (which can be closed to reduce radar visibility when you aint using it). For heavy loadout, you can add EFAMS - wing stubs which add an additional 8 hardpoints. Each hardpoint can contain 1 laser-guided Hellfire, 2 stingers, or 4 dumb-fire Hydras.

Actually - thats a lot of hardware to be carrying. Maybe I should have said you dont get many weapon choices

Oh - neat feature - once the EFAMS hardpoints are emptied, you can discard the stubs themselves to reduce radar signature again. Sweeeet.

I have two main gripes.

One is the lack of Force Feedback support - an almost unforgiveable sin for any flight-based game in today's gaming world.

The other is a little more personal likes and dislikes. Comanche 4 is a bit too much arcadey, and a bit too little simulation. At times, its more like a 21st century Mechwarrior with wings than a chopper sim.

All in all though, I'm well impressed. Its as good as I had hoped, overall, and a damn sight prettier.

Next step is to try out the online functionality, which has Deathmatch, team deathmatch and Co-operative play. Should have my ADSL connection in about 2 weeks, so I'm really looking forward to that. 16 Comanches on one map, blowing all sorts of crap outta each other has got to be fun....and is bound to take the "sneaky sneaky" element to new levels. I might be able to stand off against 3 or 4 dumb AI tanks or AA emplacements, but I reckon 1 enemy Comanche with Stingers and guided chainguns will be a different story. You cannot stand up in a straight fight against one of these things.

So...if you like chopper games, particularly heading towards the arcade-style rather than the sim-style, this should be a must on your shopping list.

jc

po0k

Wh00t.

I'll downlaod the demo right away so.