Mig Alley, published by Empire Interactive.
The recent trend to make historical flight sims has been immense. I love flight sims and especially the military ones. WWII flight sims are prolific in numbers, then came a game that dared to break from the pack.
Mig Alley is set in the Korean War and spans the timeline from June 1950 to July 1953. Historically this was a very brutal and important war. It came at a time when all the major players were still recovering from WWII. It was a big show down that pitted the United Nations against the Communist North Koreans and later Red China, intermixed with that was Russian aid in equipment and also manpower. Much of the tactics still originated from WWII. The biggest difference came from the use of jets in the air war. And this is what I love about Mig Alley. Not only do you get to fight in the same light as the WWII sims, you get to do it strapped into big jet fighters that chuck you through the air at the speed of sound!
Empire include a nice instruction booklet to get you started, a key pad reference card and a historical booklet. This was made for the RAF and highlights the Mig15 & F86 differences and doctrine. For a historian it is an interesting document it will also give any technical buffs a nice point of reference.
Once loaded onto my PC the game face is easy to explore. If you want to get straight into the action 'Hot Shot' and 'Quick Missions chuck you into the deep end. The quick missions also allows you to train. The other selection you can go for is 'Campaign'. This is immense! You can fight four individual campaigns that allow you to fly the four UN planes in the game. This will show the role they are used for and how they fly. The planes available are the F51 Mustang,F80 Shooting Star, F84 Thunder jet, F86 Sabre.
The fifth campaign lets you fight, fly and control a timeline in the Korean War. You will be expected to choose, research and plan missions. Then, select and order squadrons to fly them. You have to manage your men and machines and lead them into battle. All the elements of Mig Alley are excellent, this puts the icing on the cake. The reason? Well you have to be careful on how you go about your war. For instance, if you concentrate too much on bombing the enemies troops and ignore its airfields you will find in later battles that you will get yourself into a world of hurt when those pesky Migs come looking for you. Ignore the bridges and the Communists will be knocking at your door in no time! So careful planning and strategy is important.
So let's go for a sortie and meet our AI enemy. He's smart for a start! I thought I had a good deal of knowledge in the art of dog fighting. But the AI enemy is a smart cookie and he will not let himself be shot down easily. The flight characteristics are very well researched and attention to detail lovely. Let's consider trim? This piece of control surface lets you, in theory, fly your plane in straight and level flight, with no hands. And I have tested this out in a real plane! But because you are flying in four different planes you will have to ensure you trim your plane properly each time you fly. If you don't, then even getting your kite off the ground will end in tears. So it offers hard nut simmers like me challenges. If you are not so hardened then a quick trip to the options page will let you customize your game. For instance if you don't want to experience a 'Flame Out' in a dog fight, turn that bit off! You have a good choice of options. Where other games have failed Mig alley has succeeded in giving me a buzz in being able to out smart the AI and shoot him down. Other sims are too easy to outsmart and anticipate your enemy. Mig Alley is not one of them.
Battle is intense, it is not uncommon too be bounced by 50 Migs in one go. The AI will use Communist doctrine on tactics to do this. Your own wingman buddy and your squadron AI pilots will help you and can be tasked to do various things by way of radio. Radio Chatter is mental when you fight. This piece of game play will also help you find the enemy or your way home by way of local and distant air controllers. The local controllers known as FAC and TAC will even pop smoke to highlight your target, nice! You can either fly an entire mission from take off to landing in your cockpit or again go to an interface that allows you to warp into the action.
Nice touches include a gun camera, the ability to look around a virtual cockpit or glance quickly at one view. Look closely at the AI ground troops and watch them scatter as you bomb them! Even the sound of the strain you put onto your wings in tight turns is there and they will fall off if you pull too tightly in realistic mode. You hear the sounds of AAA or cannon rounds hitting your plane and notice, instantly, how your plane is not flying how you would like it to. If you get into a spin there are nice little cheat buttons provided to get you out of trouble, if you can't recover by your own hand.
My PC is a 400 PII, 64 RAM 32X CD ROM with Win 98. I have an ATI Rage Pro Graphics and sound blaster card with direct X support. All this is adequate for Mig Alley. I did have to tone down my screen resolution to stop the game play from slowing down but I put this down to my graphics card. The options page gives you lots of things to play around with to let you enjoy your game to the full.
The Tech bit says:
Minimum: Win 95/98, P166
MHz, 800X600, 16 Bit colour display, 32 MB free system RAM, 400 MB free hard disc space. DirectX supported 3D graphics card with 4MB is optional. DirectX supported soundcard. 6x speed CD ROM. Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick.
Recommended: Win 98, PII, 1024X768, 16 Bit colour display, 32 MB free system RAM, 400 MB or over free hard disc space. DirectX supported 3D graphics card with 12 MB RAM or more. DirectX supported soundcard 12xspeed CD ROM. Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick.
I can only find two negative points for this game. You don't get a campaign to fly the Mig 15, although you can fly it in the quick missions part. Perhaps Mig Alley 2 will address this? Secondly I would have liked to have a bit more info on how to land each plane. It has no lessons in the manual on this. As I said each plane is different to fly. However, there is an excellent Mig Alley web site at
www.empire.co.uk and they are very good at addressing your FAQs.
To conclude, Mig Alley is a huge game that will please hardened and rookie simmers. It is a game that gets you to think and is fast paced in the combat sequences. Put in the work and learn from the tactics and combat missions you fly and you will have a game which will give you immense satisfaction. I for one will have Mig Alley on my PC for a long time!
