Ah… the 3rd member of the 1994 ruling triumvirate of military flight sims (the other two being F-14 Flight Defender and Tornado, TFX sported the best graphics around at the time, with lots of detail in those polygons. In TFX you are a UN pilot sent to fly several different campaigns. There are three flyable aircraft, the Eurofighter, the F-22 and the F-117, and adjusting to all the three planes is needed. The VGA graphics are pretty good, even excellent sometimes. The sounds are also very good, with the annoying exception of the “lizard family” (every time you lock on an enemy fighter the game goes off with “Traaaacking… looks like the lizard"... The music isn’t bad, but very annoying. The CD version only increased the sampling quality of the music, which does make it less annoying, unless you have a personal distaste for anything techno or sampler-based. Flight modelling is good, while not true to life. The EF burns up its fuel in a second, which isn’t really realistic, while the American aircraft can fly all day long. Many weapons are modelled (including a treat for the real pyros among you – the air-launched version of the Tomahawk) and they perform reasonably well. Bear in mind that you may get stuck on one of the training missions, preventing you from entering the campaign. Just look around the Web for cheats and you’ll know how to skip the infantry mission. Recent similar games include EF2000 (which was its direct descendant), Tatcom, and F-22 ADF. Note: The first release of the game is a bit buggy, but fortunately DID released three patches to perfect the sim. Get them from The Patches Scroll. Reviewed by: Tiago |