VR Stalker: review by STATMAN

Text by STATMAN <statman@aol.com>

Introduction :

I wanted to express my first impressions about the game VR Stalker. Overall on a scale of one to ten I give it a five. It is not a game to buy a 3DO to play, but if you like flight sims it isn't a bad game to have. Graphically it is a cross between Hellcats for the Mac and Aces Over the Pacific for IBM machines.

Good points:

Cool rendered animation's of the planes taking off
Really cool intro
Really good chase plane view. This is the only game I have played where the chase plane view is more playable than the cockpit view!
The Texas mission is the most graphically pleasing so far. You fly over a detailed city (code 5K7-K11-117)

Bad points:

You can't take off or land.
The ground clutter is chunky and sparse. This in itself is not bad as Hellcats and F18 Hornet for the Mac suffer from this same problem, yet both are the best sims ever created for any platform, because they are playable, playable, playable.
There are no real visual cues when you near the ground and it is easy to crash.
The enemy planes and choppers are scaled bitmaps and are not modeled. IE they do not exist in 3D space.
The enemy planes fly around clueless and do not perform any standard maneuvers.
No flares or chaff.

Conclusion :

This is not a flight sim really but more of an arcade game with some flight sim features. If you already have something you like flying on your home computer skip this unless you are a real junkie.

STATMAN

michel.buffa@essi.fr