Novalogic recently released F-22 Lightning III as the latest in their Lockheed Martin fighter series, continuing their tradition of easy access for novice players, challenging gameplay for advanced players, and massive multiplayer air combat over Novaworld.net. This is the third of Novalogic’s F-22 simulations in as many years; its ancestors are F-22 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor. Having played all three, I’ve watched Novalogic break sound barriers and constantly improve this product line while keeping cost reasonable. On the downside, the F-22 series has always been a little light in the realism department, since Novalogic designs these sims with the casual sim pilot in mind. F-22 Lightning III has some definite hits and a few near misses, but overall it’s a pleasing simulation.
Starting with the basics, the interface and menus are on par with previous Novalogic sims: straightforward, with easy keyboard and joystick customization. I did have some difficulty with the custom programming and my Thrustmaster FLCS, so I simply reverted to Thrustmaster’s own programming utility to set the stick up to my preferences. The joystick mapping in Lightning III won’t support multiple levels of button programming, so I used my custom utility as always to get the stick dialed in. Other than that small issue with the joystick buttons, the rest of the menus functioned normally. The single-player game consists of several missions across a series of campaigns. After completing several missions and crossing into a new campaign, I was a little disappointed at the lack of a cut sequence. Gameplay was reasonably challenging, except that the AI wasn’t much of one: I easily dispatched AI pilots with both AIM-9s and AIM-120s, usually scoring a kill with a single missile, and I couldn’t find any difficulty slider to ramp up the AI. The most challenging tactic the AI used was sending massive flights of enemy fighters at you while another group shot down the package you were assigned to escort. The wingman AI had all the basic commands, break right and engage, engage my target, escort my target, plus a few new to me, like “engage my target’s attacker” and “patrol home base.” The wingman does a decent job supporting you, but unless you tell him otherwise he’ll fly on your six in close formation regardless of nearby bandits.
F-22 Lightning III introduces some new weapons not present in the previous sims: the BLU-109, the AGM-88 HARM, and my personal favorite, the B61 tactical thermonuclear bomb. These weapons, and the ability to mount them on external hardpoints, are a step in the right direction, since the real F-22 is capable of external mounts as well as all of the weapons in the sim. Players will love the B61, it’s a blast, literally. The avionics are good and actually viewable in padlock mode, and you can view any MFD up close by pressing the appropriate key on the numpad. The MFDs you’ll use most are the Attack Display, the Status Display and the NAV display. The Attack Display is very useful in an area with multiple bandits, since you can see which ones you’ve already fired at by looking for missile indications, though I’ve noticed the missile indicators sometimes disappear or don’t show up at all, and sometimes you can see the indicators for your wingman or other flight members; for some reason the feature is sporadic. The absence of the SHOOTLIST from previous F-22 games is definitely missed; some people may not have used it much, but you’ll wish it were there when several groups of bandits have you cycling through the wrong group of targets. The shootlist let you isolate a group and only target that group while cycling. In Lightning III, I found the best approach was to put your target group in your forward radar cone, press BORESIGHT TARGET, and then cycle targets. The NAV display comes in handy to augment the command steering cue (the tadpole), and probably the most useful MFD is the tactical map, which shows everything your AWACS can see, or what your radar can see, including flight-group labels. While all the MFDs are covered decently, there are a few cockpit problems, namely the missing shootlist and the sporadic Attack Display. The cockpit viewing system covers either snap views or a pannable cockpit view, each with advantages and disadvantages, and you can choose whichever you’re most comfortable with. I noticed that in padlock view, once an object gets past the halfway point of your cockpit it goes funky; once it’s in your rear quarter and you maintain padlock, it doesn’t feel like you’re turning correctly, and I haven’t been able to pin down exactly why, though a friend has noticed the same issue. After getting nailed repeatedly trying to figure out what padlock was doing wrong, I started using the easy aiming indicator (the red arrow) in the HUD view to locate and engage targets, only using padlock when I knew the enemy would be in my front quarter, where it seemed to work correctly. My advice: use the HUD-only view unless you know the enemy is in front of you, or above and forward.
The graphics are very well done. The weather and lightning effects are VERY COOL, and the rain effect is excellent, with very realistic-looking raindrops. The night-vision goggles come in handy at night, and I’m happy Novalogic put them in. Object detail is intricate and the landscape is awesome as usual. I do miss the volcano that appeared in F-22 Raptor, and the desert terrain doesn’t feel as good as Raptor’s, but it’s still very well done. Visually, F-22 Lightning III upholds the quality of its predecessors, and with 3D acceleration it looks even better.
Multiplayer is probably my favorite feature. Novalogic runs a free service called Novaworld that lets up to 128 players engage in deathmatches, RAW (Raptor Air Wars, where your team defends your base while destroying the enemy’s), and the new co-op play. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you’ll have no problem finding a game on Novaworld; the connection is solid for nearly everyone and the gameplay is fast-paced. If you’re not into the crowd, you can host your own game, publicly so anyone can join, or privately for just you and your friends. My compliments to Novalogic for letting us host our own dedicated servers supporting up to 16 players; I was even able to host a game on one of my systems and swap the CD so I could join the same game from another. Unfortunately, with all the good, I noticed a few bad things. My biggest complaint is the lack of a muting feature in Novaworld: too many times I’ve run into people who turn it into a shouting match about what a BIG MAN they are, and chat flame wars as intense as any RAW war. So please, Novalogic: ADD A SELECTIVE CHAT MUTING SYSTEM TO NOVAWORLD. Other problems included a couple of buggy co-op missions: in one, a required target flight kept disappearing before we could kill them, so after three tries we reset the server and moved on, only for the next mission to oddly not register my kill after I bombed a missile boat, which remained selected when targeting despite the visible crater where I hit, forcing another reset. Despite this, we played co-op one night for about four fun-filled hours, and I’m personally glad Novalogic decided to allow co-op in their fighter sims. Another new feature is VON, Voice over Net, which lets people talk to each other in multiplayer; the game even comes with an Andrea Electronics microphone offering excellent voice quality. It couldn’t replace my trusty headset, but I don’t think Andrea will mind, since my headset is the Andrea Electronics GameWare, which I have nothing but good things to say about. VON quality itself is decent, with some people sounding good and others poor, which I think is a line-quality factor rather than a problem with VON, since voice over the internet has always been a little flaky. Using VON I was able to communicate with several people in the co-op game, and I found communication discipline to be an issue, since most people haven’t used voice for sim flying much; here’s hoping people quickly learn quick, concise formats to avoid confusion mid-mission. Novalogic also has an update checker in Lightning III, so updates are a matter of clicking a button; as I write this, I’m installing the newest update, a whopping 13MB. They’re usually good about keeping updates small, but given the rough edges here and there, I can see the need for a bigger one, and I’m waiting to hear what it addresses.
Final analysis: I really started enjoying Novalogic’s aircraft sims with F-22 Raptor and the introduction of Novaworld, and F-22 Lightning III continues that fine tradition. I’ve had a LOT of fun flying on both Novaworld servers and my own, and the co-op multiplayer is the best new feature. I’d have loved selective chat muting in Novaworld, but I guess I’ll just have to ignore the rude people and sort out the useful comms. The Voice over Net feature is nice when you and the person you’re talking to both have a good connection. The graphics are as nice as ever, even better than Raptor with 3D acceleration, and the game itself is geared for easy learning and fast, furious gameplay. Another good point is the price, low compared to other sims; I’ve seen it on sale at CompUSA for only $29.95, a good deal for the amount of fun you get. Bottom line: if you liked F-22 Raptor, you’ll love F-22 Lightning III, but if in doubt, try the demo on Novalogic’s site first and you may be surprised how much fun it can be. So whether you want to jump right in and duke it out with a lot of other people online, get together with close friends, or fly the single-player missions, F-22 Lightning III is sure to bring you hours of entertainment.
