Eurofighter Typhoon is the latest flight sim from the creators (DID) of previous sims, such as TFX (1993), EF2000 (1995), F-22 Total Air War (1998).Typhoon takes place in Iceland in the year is 2015. Our Russian friends plan on finishing some unsettled business and invades Iceland. NATO responds with a small but well-equipped Air Force consisting of the new EuroFighter Typhoon combat aircraft... In the game you have to control and manage six pilots in real time, a feature made possible by the event-driven dynamic campaign. Managing pilots is quite simple (maybe too much simple...), missions are automatically generated for them based on their skills and location and your non-cockpit decisions typically boil down to transferring them to other bases when the action gets too close to the one they’re currently in.
The game includes three basic game modes, the first is to try out Peacetime, which is basically training missions and descriptions of what each feature of the aircraft is and does, Wartime is the actual campaign, and Multiplayer is present in the form of several options: Head To Head (Players can divided into a maximum of up to 3 Teams based on color or an all out Deathmatch), Base Capture (airborne version of CTF), Touch N' Go's (Pick up your "power-ups" to accumulate a specific number of points win) and Co-Op Missions.Unfortunately there is no "quick mission" option, nor mission editor included, so you have no way to go right in and test your dogfighting skills against the enemy of your choice. Eurofighter Typhoon utilizes the slightly more-advanced Wargasm 3Dream engine. The aircraft are sharp, detailed, and varied, the environment is interesting and detailed too. Weapons, damage, smoke, explosions and other special effects seems to be well done, including use of 3D lighting effects. Only CNN TV and other static and non-interactive 3D cut-scenes a bit sucks. Eurofighter Typhoon includes a couple of view options: full cockpit, full front no cockpit, target padlock, internal view and external view, threat padlock internal and external, wingman padlock internal and external, moveable external view, looped fly-by, weapon view, target view, and smart view. In addition a campaign map is available at all times for the player, showing pilot location, defense sites, airbases, sectors, potential targets, and the like.
Still sounds cool? Well, if you are hard-core sim player (EF2000, F15 and Flanker 2), forget this game. Eurofighter Typhoon is not being marketed as a "hard-core" simulation. I'm almost sure the hardcore crowd are going to find much to dislike if they expect a worthy successor to EF2000. For an example, while the original EF2000 was notoriously difficult to land, Eurofighter Typhoon has no even manual rudder control in the game. The AI does operate the rudder for you at low speeds and seems to do it quite correctly. Only confused me that when I did a smooth landing, the aircraft came to a complete stop but always exploded :-o Is it flash back to EF2000 or was I just really unlucky? :) Also there is no highly detailed cockpit, instead there is a single radar mode and targets can be automatically chosen by the computer with a single keystroke. But the cockpit looks really horrible, shame to DID. I could say Eurofighter Typhoon is LITE flight-sim, the game trying to fill an empty area between arcade game and flight sim, but if you are hard-core sim player, will better to wait for other fly-sim game, such a IL-2 Sturmovik.