Flying Nightmares

The Good
This game is rather unusual in that it is both military operations simulator and a flight sim. In this game you serve as both the commander of a U.S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and as a Harrier pilot. The operations simulator has you planning both flight missions and a beach head invasion of East Timor (which has since gained autonomy and renamed itself). The game manual (yes, I still have it), is actually a really interesting read; it goes into the geo-political background of the sim, and the make-up of the MEU and the enemy forces.

The Bad
The AI in the game is very uninteresting. Dog fights don't ever really get close in, mostly just quick passes, circling and trying to get missile lock. Don't expect any Harriers you are not piloting yourself to do well vs. SAMs or enemy aircraft; and you can't plan multi-aircraft missions, so they aren't really wingmen. The operations planning GUI resembles the operations software the Marine Corps was using at the time (probably on DEC Alphas), which means the interface is not intuitive in the modern context (or even for us Mac users when the game was released). Finally, it is almost impossible to land the Harrier, at least not without a full HOTAS setup. Fortunately, the game does give you an autopilot landing feature.

The Bottom Line
I can't really recommend going back and playing this one, unless you already have some nostalgia for it.