Combat Air Patrol (1992) 
| Details (Commodore Amiga) | Supported platforms | Artwork and Media | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher: Genre: Author(s): Minimum Memory Required: Maximum Players: Joysticks: Language: Media Code: Media Type: Country of Release: Comments: |  PsygnosisFlight Simulator 512K Yes Eng 3.5" Floppy disk Worldwide | Commodore Amiga |
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| Your Reviews |
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Iss 23 Mar 1993 (Amiga Power) 4th Dec 2011 04:50Having responsibility for the lives of thousands of allied soldiers might seem a terrible burden for a single person, but in Combat Air Patrol it is just one of the many options you have in your mission to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait or. CAPs one of those flight sims – and then some - games, where you not only have the option of flying around happily firing off SAMS, but also control the entire ground war as well. Eek, that sounds a bit complex, doesn’t it?
Well yes, but thanks to Psygnosis, CAP is an easy-to-fly affair. There is nothing more horrible than searching through a manual the size of the Hampshire to find out where the ignition key is, but thankfully the programmers have realised that no one cares about the lack of such details.
In the Instant Flight mode, you can just skip all complexities, and quickly start off on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which is sitting in the middle of a sizeable fleet in the Persian Gulf. The manual recommends that you use the keyboard controls, but it is not a flying game if you cannot use a joystick is it? So switching to the joystick mode, I took off, waggled around a bit and… crashed into the sea a mere few hundred feet from the ship. Suffering the indignity of being pulled out of the briny, I strapped into my second plane and tried the keyboard like they suggested, and it flies perfectly. This sensation provokes a mixed response. On one hand, the motion is smooth and wonderfully detailed, but on the other, it is a shame you have got to fall back on the keys to control the plane with any degree of precision, as it kind of detracts from the feeling of flying by the seat of your pants.
But back to the look of the game. As well as the exterior views, there is the normal front view complete with dials and Head Up Display. You can even look around the skies and, by some bizarre, Exorcist-esque manoeuvre, swivel your head round 180 degrees and smile at your startled co-pilot. Switching to the trailing view, the control surfaces on your plane move in a pleasingly realistic way. I will say it at the end again, but it is worth saying that CAP is just about the fastest flight sim I have seen on the Amiga, and as such it is one of the most playable ones.
Of course, the point of CAP is that it is not just a flight sim, it is a Gulf War flight sim. The campaign mode starts you off at day one of the war and presents you with a map of the Kuwait, with the ground forces of either side drawn up against each other. You can target enemy units for reconnaissance or air attack, and move infantry or armour up to attack opposing forces. Obviously, it would be impossible to fly every sortie yourself, so the game takes your performance from each mission and uses this as an average. In this way, if you are disastrous in a few missions, your poor performance will be reflected across the entire battle field.
Considering it is based on a way where the allies had total air supremacy after the first few days, there are an awful lot of enemy planes in CAP, but I suppose there would not be much of a game without them. For most of the game they are nothing more than a fast-moving blip across your gunsight, but once you have got a Sidewinder locked onto them, then they are generally history. Unfortunately, the same can be said for you, and quite a lot of the time you get that sinking feeling as your hydraulics and engines pack up and 36 million dollars of fighter goes into a steep dive. Thankfully there is an eject option so you can at least watch your plane crash from the safety from a parachute.
There are several difficulty levels, which is just as well really. On the hard level you come under the sort of ground and air fire that you would expect a novice pilot would receive when he flies a straight, level course across a war zone. It may be fearsomely authentic, but once you have been downed several times, it is good to know that you can bomb airfields, convoys and bridges at an easier level where the defenders are squinting myopically down their gun-sights.
Air threats are the staple of flight sims, but with CAP your missions revolve around destroying the ground targets, and your arsenal reflects this. There are the usual free-all bombs, but why should you bother with them when you have got a high-tech arsenal? Walleye AGM-62 are gliding bombs that you release from a high attitude and guide in using a nose mounted TV camera view, where the laser-guided variety give you a close up view of the target that is eerily close to the real attacks viewed on the news. These ‘ stand off’ weapons are displayed convincingly, save you the anguish of getting shot to pieces, and add greatly to that ‘Gulf War’ feeling.
It is a brilliant game, and even more impressive when you compare it to last month’s Harrier AV8B. It is so impressively fast that it is hard to believe unless you see it, but there are a few niggly points.
It is possible, for instance, to load up so many weapons that your plane plummets into the sea. I really cannot imagine US ground crew being so stupid as to let you render a plane unflyable, so why allow this overload?
Also, on the harder missions, your life expectancy is in single minutes, but maybe this says more about my lack of pilot skills than the murderous level of ground fire. Small grumbles indeed for such an impressive game.
MARK WINSTANLEY
Well yes, but thanks to Psygnosis, CAP is an easy-to-fly affair. There is nothing more horrible than searching through a manual the size of the Hampshire to find out where the ignition key is, but thankfully the programmers have realised that no one cares about the lack of such details.
In the Instant Flight mode, you can just skip all complexities, and quickly start off on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which is sitting in the middle of a sizeable fleet in the Persian Gulf. The manual recommends that you use the keyboard controls, but it is not a flying game if you cannot use a joystick is it? So switching to the joystick mode, I took off, waggled around a bit and… crashed into the sea a mere few hundred feet from the ship. Suffering the indignity of being pulled out of the briny, I strapped into my second plane and tried the keyboard like they suggested, and it flies perfectly. This sensation provokes a mixed response. On one hand, the motion is smooth and wonderfully detailed, but on the other, it is a shame you have got to fall back on the keys to control the plane with any degree of precision, as it kind of detracts from the feeling of flying by the seat of your pants.
But back to the look of the game. As well as the exterior views, there is the normal front view complete with dials and Head Up Display. You can even look around the skies and, by some bizarre, Exorcist-esque manoeuvre, swivel your head round 180 degrees and smile at your startled co-pilot. Switching to the trailing view, the control surfaces on your plane move in a pleasingly realistic way. I will say it at the end again, but it is worth saying that CAP is just about the fastest flight sim I have seen on the Amiga, and as such it is one of the most playable ones.
Of course, the point of CAP is that it is not just a flight sim, it is a Gulf War flight sim. The campaign mode starts you off at day one of the war and presents you with a map of the Kuwait, with the ground forces of either side drawn up against each other. You can target enemy units for reconnaissance or air attack, and move infantry or armour up to attack opposing forces. Obviously, it would be impossible to fly every sortie yourself, so the game takes your performance from each mission and uses this as an average. In this way, if you are disastrous in a few missions, your poor performance will be reflected across the entire battle field.
Considering it is based on a way where the allies had total air supremacy after the first few days, there are an awful lot of enemy planes in CAP, but I suppose there would not be much of a game without them. For most of the game they are nothing more than a fast-moving blip across your gunsight, but once you have got a Sidewinder locked onto them, then they are generally history. Unfortunately, the same can be said for you, and quite a lot of the time you get that sinking feeling as your hydraulics and engines pack up and 36 million dollars of fighter goes into a steep dive. Thankfully there is an eject option so you can at least watch your plane crash from the safety from a parachute.
There are several difficulty levels, which is just as well really. On the hard level you come under the sort of ground and air fire that you would expect a novice pilot would receive when he flies a straight, level course across a war zone. It may be fearsomely authentic, but once you have been downed several times, it is good to know that you can bomb airfields, convoys and bridges at an easier level where the defenders are squinting myopically down their gun-sights.
Air threats are the staple of flight sims, but with CAP your missions revolve around destroying the ground targets, and your arsenal reflects this. There are the usual free-all bombs, but why should you bother with them when you have got a high-tech arsenal? Walleye AGM-62 are gliding bombs that you release from a high attitude and guide in using a nose mounted TV camera view, where the laser-guided variety give you a close up view of the target that is eerily close to the real attacks viewed on the news. These ‘ stand off’ weapons are displayed convincingly, save you the anguish of getting shot to pieces, and add greatly to that ‘Gulf War’ feeling.
It is a brilliant game, and even more impressive when you compare it to last month’s Harrier AV8B. It is so impressively fast that it is hard to believe unless you see it, but there are a few niggly points.
It is possible, for instance, to load up so many weapons that your plane plummets into the sea. I really cannot imagine US ground crew being so stupid as to let you render a plane unflyable, so why allow this overload?
Also, on the harder missions, your life expectancy is in single minutes, but maybe this says more about my lack of pilot skills than the murderous level of ground fire. Small grumbles indeed for such an impressive game.
MARK WINSTANLEY
(Anonymous) (Unknown) 24th Nov 2010 09:22| Cheats | Trivia |
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History
This title was first added on 1st July 2006
This title was most recently updated on 4th December 2011