F-22 Lightning 3 Full Game Download

[Maricel Fergason]

Novalogicrecently released F-22 Lightning III as the latest in theirLockheed/Martin fighter series. Novalogic continues their tradition ofease of access for novice players, fun for all and massive multiplayerair combat via Novaworld.net. F-22 Lightning III is the third ofNovalogics F-22 simulations in as many years, its predecessors beingF-22 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor.

Having played all three simulations, I have seen Novalogic break soundbarriers and constantly improve this product line while keeping thecost reasonable. While the F-22 series has always been a little lightin the realism department, the general gameplay and look has greatlyimproved through the generations. F-22 Lightning III has some definitehits, and also some near misses, but overall is a pleasing andwell-executed simulation.

Starting with the basics, the interface and menus are on parwith previous Novalogic simulations. All menus are straight forward,and keyboard and joystick customization is all easy and straightforwardas well. I did have some difficulty with the custom programming and myThrustmaster FLCS (Steve's setup is #2 listed on our Download page.)

My solution was to simply revert to using Thrustmasters ownprogramming utility to customize my stick according to my personalpreferences. The joystick mapping in Lightning III will not supportmultiple levels of button programming, so I used my custom programmingutility to get my stick dialed in. Other than this small joystickissue, the rest of the menus functioned normally.

The Single player games consist of several missions over aseries of campaigns. After completing several of the missions andcrossing over a campaign, I was a little disappointed at the lack of acutsequence.

Gameplay is generally good except that the AI remains a bit weak. Ifound the AI pilots too easily dispatched with both AIM-9s andAIM-120s, usually with only a single missile. I could not find any kindof difficulty slider to ramp up the computer AI difficulty. Such aslider would be useful and could lower the quantity of enemies whileincreasing the quality.Unfortunately, the most challenging tactic that the AI used was to sendmassive flights of enemy fighters at you while the other fighter groupshot down the package you were assigned to escort.

The Wingman AI has all the basic commands such as break right andengage, engage my target, escort my target. There were a fewwingman commands that were new to me such as Engage my targetsattacker and Patrol Home Base. The Wingman does a decent jobsupporting you, but unless you tell him otherwise, hell fly on yoursix in close formation regardless of nearby bandits.

F-22 Lightning III introduces some new weapons that were not present inthe previous F-22 simulations. The BLU-109, the AGM-88 HARM, and mypersonal favorite, the B61 Tactical Thermonuclear Bomb. These weaponsand the ability to mount weapons on external hardpoints indicates astep in the right direction since the real F-22 is capable of externalmounts as well as using all of the weapons available in the simulation.Players will love using the B-61! Its a blastliterally!

The Avionics are good and actually are viewable in padlock mode. Youcan also view any MFD close up by pressing the appropriate key on thenumpad on your keyboard. The MFDs that youll use the most are theAttack Display, the Status Display, and the NAV display. The Attackdisplay is very useful in an area with multiple bandits. The attackdisplay will tell you which bandits you have already designated andlaunched at.

But budget cuts seem to have impacted our troops. I have noticed thatsometimes the missile indicators disappear, or do not show up at all.Sometimes you can see the missile indicators for your wingman as wellas other members of your flight. The absence of the SHOOTLIST from theprevious F-22 is definitely missed.

While some people may not have used it much, youll find yourselfwishing the Shootlist was available when there are several groups ofbandits and you keep cycling through the wrong group of targets. Theshootlist allowed you to isolate a group of targets and only targetthat group while cycling targets, in Lightning III, I found the bestthing to do, is put your target group in your forward radar cone andpress BORESITE TARGET and then cycle targets. The Navigation displaycomes in handy to augment the command steering cue. (the tadpole).

Probably the most useful MFD is the tactical Map that shows everythingyour AWACS can see, or what you can see with your radar including thelabels of the flight group. While all the MFDs are covered decently,there are a few problems in the cockpit, namely the lack of shootlist,and the sporadic Attack display.

The cockpit viewing system covers either snap views or a panablecockpit view. Both views have their advantages or disadvantages, andthe user can choose the method he or she is most comfortable with. Inoticed that when using the padlock view when an object gets past thehalfway point of your cockpit, the view goes funky. Once an object getsin your rear quarter, and you maintain padlock, for some reason itdoesnt feel like you're turning correctly.

I havent been able to put my finger on it exactly, and a friend hascommented on the same issue. After I kept getting nailed while tryingto figure out what the padlock was doing wrong, I started using theeasy aiming indicator (red arrow) in the HUD view to locate and engagemy target. I only used the padlock when I knew the enemy fighter wouldbe in my front quarter because the padlock seemed to function correctlywhile the enemy was in front of your plane. My advice, use the HUD onlyview unless you know the enemy is in front of you, or above and forwardof you.

The Graphics are very well done. The weather and lightning effectsare VERY COOL. The rain effect was very well done with the raindropslooking very realistic. The night vision goggles come in handy atnight, and Im happy to see that Novalogic put it in the simulation.

The object detail is very intricate and the landscape is awesome asusual. I do miss seeing the volcano that appeared in F-22 Raptor andthe desert terrain doesnt feel as good as the desert in F-22 Raptor,but its still very well done. Visually, F-22 Lighting 3 upholds thegraphic quality of its predecessors, and with 3D acceleration it lookseven better.

Multiplayer is probably my favorite feature of this simulation.Novalogic runs a free multiplayer service called Novaworld thatallows up to 128 players to engage in online combat. This takes threeforms- deathmatch, RAW (Raptor Air Wars where your team defends yourbase while destroying the enemy squadrons base), and the new game,co-op play. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you will haveno problem finding a game to play on Novaworld. The connection is solidfor most everyone, and it is fast paced gameplay.

If youre not into the crowd thing, you can host your own game eitherpublicly where anyone can join, or privately for just you and yourfriends for up to sixteen players. My compliments to Novalogic forallowing us the ability to host our own dedicated servers! I was ableto host a game on one of my systems and swap the CD so I could joininto the same game on my other system, great for people who want to setup a dedicated server on which people can play.

Unfortunately with all the good things about multiplayer, thereare a few limitations. My biggest complaint is the lack of a mutingfeature in Novaworld. Too many times I have found people engaging inshouting matches and announcing what a BIG MAN they are. Also, thereare flaming wars as intense as any RAW war. So, please, Novalogic: ADDA SELECTIVE CHAT MUTING SYSTEM TO NOVAWORLD!

Other problems I encountered were a couple of co-op missions that hadbugs in them. In one mission one of the required target flights keptdisappearing before we had a chance to kill them. After three tries wereset the server and moved on to the next mission where after bombing amissile boat my kill was not registered, and the missile boat was stillselected when targeting.

After close examination of the target, I could see the crater where Ihit, yet no target. Since we could not kill a target that wasnt there,we had to reset the server yet again. Despite this, we played Co-op onenight for four fun filled hours. I am personally glad Novalogic decidedto allow co-op in their fighter simulations.

Another new feature is VON: Voice over Net. This allows people to talkwith each other while in multiplayer games. F-22 Lighting III evencomes complete with an Andrea Electronics microphone which offersexcellent voice quality. Of course it could not replace my trustyheadset with microphone and headphones, but I dont think Andrea willcomplain much because my headset is the Andrea Electronics GameWareheadset, also excellent quality.

The VON quality itself is decent with some people reporting goodquality and others complaining. I think its a line quality factorrather than a problem with VON since voice over Internet has alwaysbeen a little flaky.

Using VON I was able to communicate with several people in the co-opgame, and I found communication discipline to be an issue since mostpeople havent used voice for simulation flying much (See our Military Flight Comms and Operational Brevity).I guess we can hope that people learn quick and concise formats inwhich to transmit information to avoid confusion while flying amission.

Novalogic has an update checker in Lightning III, so updatesare simply a matter of clicking the button to check for new software.As I am writing this, I am updating my F-22 Lightning III with thelatest software, a whopping 13 MB of update! Usually, they are goodabout keeping the updates small, but considering the rough edges hereand there, I can see the need for a larger update. Im waiting to seewhat the update addresses as I write this article.

I started really enjoying Novalogics aircraft simulations withthe release of F-22 Raptor and the introduction of Novaworld. F-22Lightning III continues this fine tradition. I have had a LOT of funflying on both Novaworld servers and my own server. The co-opmultiplayer is the best new feature for F-22 Lightning III.

3a8082e126