User Reviews (1 - 11 of 74)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Falcon 4.0: Allied Force

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 65
Date: December 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a pilot and a computer aircraft simulation nut, I bought this eagerly.

What a waste of money!
Unless you are prepared to spend 3-4 months or more learning this very complex game, forget it!

Just the radar takes 30 pages of the manual!

The manual is in PDF format, & is over 700 pages long. To print this out on a color printer will cost about $175 at 22 cents a page. It is also impossible to print a legible keyboard layout.

Give this one a miss, and try Pacific Fighters or IL-2.

Didn't anyone learn from Jane's F-15 ; this was a great classic, and has never been equalled. It took a week to learn.

High learning curve

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: September 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Maybe it would help if I played this game for more than two hours. But usually if after two hours I'm still crashing or getting my ass kicked I quit. Really high learning curve. I wouldn't recommened it unless you can already fly an F16.

Released half-done

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 13
Date: September 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am a big fan of Falcon 4, and was excited by F4AF, but it has been a big dissapointment. Lead pursuit talks about testing and quality assurance so how did the game get released with the radar mode getting stuck in ACM. This is a very obvious bug and should never have went out the door that way. Another thing is the lack of common sense. They have put so much stuff around an airbase the the fps drops to 5 or less. How can you take off or land with that kind of fps. I have read on the internet that other pilots with superior computers to mine that they also have this problem. I would rather have less things to look at and have a high fps rather than many things to look at and a low fps. This is a problem in my book; this shows that the F4AF team is more interested in bells and whistles than practical matters. I just wish that they would put high fps as a priority rather than the bells and whistles. Another complaint is changing key mappings, but this is not a disaster. A real big complaint is the manual. More or less just a copy of the original F4 manual which is OK, but they got lazy on the manual and left many, many holes in it regarding new features added to the sim (not a game). For example, how the heck do you get TFR (terrain following radar) to work. Do I need a special radar pod or what? Is it even implemented in the game? Why does it say OFF and I can't turn it on. Spent hours trying to figure it out. It might be just that I don't know how to do it, but I have read the manual over and over about this and it is no help. Another thing is the manual (pdf) is protected by password. I can't make notes by copying and pasting because the pdf won't let you. Is there a reason for this? Heck the disk is not copy protected so what is the point in securing the manual pdf? I do like it that the disk is not copy protected. I am sure that real virtual pilots like me will pay the money for the disk; I want to support those programmers for this project. No stupid numbers to type in to install it and no activation. I will NEVER EVER buy activated software. (Don't p_ss down my back and tell me it's raining.) Anyway, I am used to fighting F4 to get it running and F4AF will also be a fight too (it runs but manual has holes). Overall the game is good except it was released a bit early. I admit that I have not had the game that long, but first impressions are lasting impressions. But being the 'jet nut' that I am, I will never give up on it.

A job to install

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this product in the hopes the legendary complexities of Falcon were fixed; nope. In the past, there has been the "Falcon dance," a complex job of installing the game and updating it's myriad patches and so forth. The consolidated Allied Force was supposed to put all that work to rest. So it was a great disappointment to me when I could not reinstall the game after I uninstalled it. The fix requires editing registry files; something I will not do. Too bad, because the sim obviously has rich content and a dedicated fan base. But I have a full time job already.

WAAAY too complicated

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This was a complete waste of money for me. I guess if you have nothing but time on your hands, maybe you can figure out how to fly this thing. For those of us who have enjoyed moderately complex flight sims, this is a real disappointment, as the learning curve is precipitous. How many commands do you want to learn just to do some basic stuff? If you'd answer "less than a dozen," then don't get this.

ENORMOUS potential, but insanely difficult gameplay.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 17
Date: September 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Almost every aspect of Falcon 4.0: Allied Force screams, "Potential, potential, potential!" The realism, the graphics, and the flight model are just absolutely out of this world. But, when I started progressing through the training missions and thumbing through the several hundred page manual, I became quickly dismayed. I tried on more than a few sessions for several hours to land this plane in the training missions to no avail. I followed every instruction in the manual to the best of my ability, read article postings, wrote to the programmers, updated the game, and I still ended up spinning on the runway spinning with smoke billowing from my fractured Falcon.

I finally came to the inconclusion that it's virtually impossible to land the plane, that I received a bad copy of the game, or the game is just so difficult that it's no fun to play. I tried some of the other missions, in which one learns how to use the radar and weapons systems, and I'm used to having to remember Shift-Alt-Ctrl-Meta keycodes in order to play flight sims, but this game is just over the top.

I threw in the towel in total frustration and decided that it was just a waste of money and time souping my system up to play it.

Not ready for On-Line Multi-Player Play

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: August 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is an outstanding flight sim. However, game does not work for on-line multi-player games. Difficulties in on-line connections was an ongoing problem with the original version, and if anything this version is worse than it was with the original. Even with instructions provided to setup a multi-player game, players can not connect. This is definatly a show stopper, since multi-player games are the most enjoyable.

Falcon 4 Allied Force

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: September 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It dosent appear to have any game servers.You must create your own.If you dont know the persons Ip you wish to join in a game with your out of luck.Several of my adult online gamming friends purchased this as well and they are all disapointed.
Graphics are sub par and I have a 7800 GTX/OC vid card along with 2 gigs of DDR2 dual channel pc4200 ram.In all fairness I would have to say though that the flying aspect of the sim is very good but could still use some work.
As far as the vender it took almost two weeks to get my product.My friends all went to local retail store and picked theirs up same day with little or no difference in price.

I am quite disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: September 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is said that this is one of the best flight simulators on the market. I am disappointed with this game. Eurofighter 2000 seemed to be much better.
In Falcon 4.0 simulator, aircraft does not behave realistically all the time. I managed to land without any problems with one wheel hidden and front one turned 90 degrees right. Terrain is not so high detail as advertised and it appears blocky from high altitudes (it does not look like satellite photo, instead it looks more like a puzzle). There is option called ACMI, which lets watch your recorded flights. Whenever I have recording on, my game crashes after misssion all the time (but fortunatelly video is saved anyway). Rocket trails on video do not dissapper when you rewind it, and not all aspects of the flight are recorded (communication, and certain states of the plane for example afterburner) are not recorded.
AI could take care of the second pilot in a back seat (do things which second pilot should do).
Other things work very well, AI is very tough (enemy AI controlled pilots fly very well), and ACMI video replay replays the mission exactly as it happened even when certain states of the plane are not recorded. Graphically old Eurofighter 2000 was much more advanced (had better graphics (more graphically detailed simulation, more colorfull not puzzle like textures, more detailed terrain, better looking interior) and bigger choice of weapns.
There is mission editor, multiplayer and skirmish like.
In skirmish and multiplayer you can fly many diffrent planes (not only F-16) but they look inside exactly like F-16 and behave like one too, so at this point game is quite unrealistic. These jets can take huge loads of weaponry in multiplayer too so it makes the game even less realistic.
Falcon 4.0 is a nice game, however because of the reasons mentioned above I got quite disappointed.

Very disappointing!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: April 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After having read so many good things on this sophisticated flight sim, I took the big step forward and purchased it.

What a disappointment! I know that art will always be more difficult to master than criticism, and I must first start off with the good features of the game: its flight model is quite realistic. The man-machine interface is impressive, with keys accessible inflight with the use of the mouse pointer. Also, the canopy layout and effects are very well rendered. Combat is fun, and yes, overall, the simulated aircraft feels close to the real deal.

Now, the bad ones. Graphics and terrain rendition are appalling. Looks like the engine that was used was one that was already a bit obsolete at the end of the late 90's. Also, programming your joystick -mine is a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro- turned quickly into a tedious task. The flight modelling of the Falcon is far from perfect and needs some serious improving. Come on, it's so damn difficult to get the aircraft to stall realistically!!

I have been addicted to Lock-On ever since it was first launched. And I am still. And before, I was hooked onto F/A-18 Korea, but it is now cruelly showing its age. Get yourself Lock-On, and nothing else, then please tell me what you think of it. It's a day and night difference. Lock-On remains, up to this day and according to me, the very best in advanced, realistic A2A combat flight sim. Period.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next 

Actions