Fly!

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Flight Sim

Format: 3 CDs

Developer: Terminal Reality

Publisher: Gathering of Developers

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS 8, PowerMac G3 (including iMac), 400MB hard disk space, 32MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, 3D hardware accelerator (4MB VRAM minimum)

Network Feature: Yes

3Dfx Support: Direct 3D, Rave and Glide

Retail Price: $39.99

Availability: Out Now

There's a scene towards the beginning of Flash Gordon in which Flash, played by Sam J. Jones, is forced to land an airplane after the pilots are torn from the cockpit by the hand of Ming the Merciless. Despite the wind in his face, the turbulent weather, the wild angle of approach, and the debated uselessness of Dale Arden, Flash is able to land the plane on Dr. Zarkov's laboratory, killing only the lovable, but simple, Munson in the process.

What Flash did there is what many of us have fantasized about (crash landing a plane, I mean, not killing Munson). Each time I take the silver bird to parts unknown, I play out the scenario where the pilots pass out because of the bad fish, and I'm called upon to land the plane and save the lives of hundreds. But as the make-believe photographers label me hero and I'm showered with gifts and praise, a thought occurs to me; I don't know the damndest thing about flying a plane.

Enter Fly! from Gathering of Developers. Billed as "The ultimate flight simulator for beginners to experts," Fly! promised to break new ground in the flight sim genre. Did it? Well, I guess, but...

Be wary of anything--be it game, movie, restaurant or what have you--with an exclamation mark in its name. I mean, imagine if I started signing my checks "Kirk!" Seems to me it'd make people suspicisious, like I'm trying to hide something by generating false enthusiasm through punctuation. Never a good thing.

The thing about Fly! is that it needs some false enthusiasm. All graphics and flight accuracy aside, there's just not much going on here. But don't blame developer Terminal Reality. This is a flight sim going for realism, not action. Because of that, you're either going to celebrate Fly! or you're going to toss it out with yesterday's fish.

Despite its realistic cockpit controls, Fly!...okay, disclaimer here. I've read many reviews of this game in which the reviewer brags up the realism of the controls and flight physics. I have to ask myself, how many of these people have ever actually been in a cockpit, let alone flown a plane? Aren't most game reviewers for websites about fourteen-years-old? So yeah, the Beech King Air B200 may be a perfect duplicate, but I wouldn't know it from the boiler room of Gund Arena. So forget realism. Let's talk what really matters.

Installation of Fly! is pretty simple...provided it works. The game refused to be installed on my 9600. Okay, so I know the 604e processor doesn't meet the minimum requirements, but it should least play poorly, right? A Read Me offered a couple of alternative installation methods, but fared no better. The same Read Me then suggested I call tech support. Rather than do that, I decided to wait until my G4 arrived and try installation on a supported computer. The result was a smooth installation...no phone calls necessary.

However, my troubles weren't done. Although I could launch the game, I couldn't click on anything. The cursor would move and I could select items in the menu bar, but I couldn't click any window buttons. Okay, update time. A quick search of the gaming websites revealed an updater, so I went to get it.

And get it. And get it. And get it. Downloading the udpate took longer than getting clearance to land at Newark during a bomb threat. (My comment about knowing nothing of flying an airplane includes landing at Newark during a bomb threat.) Now I'm not opposed to getting updates that weigh in at the 5 to 10MB mark. But when they get upwards of 50MB, well, that just ain't right.

So okay, once everything was installed and updated and running smoothly, I finally took to the air. Fly! offers you two choices for piloting the plane; you can either draw up a flight plan, customize the plane and the weather, power the baby up and head off into the wild blue yonder, or you can select a preconfigured scenario. Although the "Fly Now!" (there's that pesky exclamation mark again) feature, as they call it, gets you in the air faster, there's something rather satisfying about flipping all those switches in the cockpit, listening to your engines power up, and taxiing down the runway. Before you can do that, however, there is much to be learned.

I actually won't get into all of that, however. Obviously, if Terminal Reality wants to live up to its name, then these airplanes must be fairly complex to fly. This, after all, is why airlane pilots are paid so much. Well, that and the fact that most seem to have two separate families to support--one on each coast--and keeping a secret that big can become pretty costly. (Once again, this falls into the "Know nothing of being a pilot" category.)

But Terminal Reality has taken complexity one step further by allowing players to control the weather as well! Not only can you pick your plane and the time of flight, but also cloud coverage, wind direction and velocity, amount of precipitation...it's freaky powerful. So although "Fly Now!" is an option, it may as well just be called "Crash Now!" because that's what you're going to do if you don't take a good long while to learn not only the controls of the planes offered, but also the physics of flight itself and how the weather affects those physics.

Once that's taken care of, you can finally take to the air with some degree of comfort. Most of the action in Fly! centers around takeoff and landing...piloting the plane from point A to point B is actually quite boring. Even buzzing the Statue of Liberty or zipping under the Golden Gate Bridge eventually loses its thrill. So what is there to do while you're up there? What all pilots do, I guess...look around.

Fly! is all about graphics, you see, and the graphics are gorgeous. Sure the landscapes tend to get muddy at points and the lighting on the plane never seems to change no matter how you're looking at it, but I'm still impressed each time I play the game. From the varying opacity of clouds to the lens flares off the cockpit window to the runway lights shining the distance, Fly! is simply gorgeous to look at. The audio is quite impressive as well, and even surpasses the graphics in terms of realism. In all, Fly! isn't so much a game as it is an experience.

And there's the problem. Fly! is actually more fun to look at then it is to play. Rather than spend the time learning to fly, I would've just as soon found someone who already knows and just watched him/her land at O'Hare during a snowstorm. And besides, after playing Flying Circus and Falcon 4.0, you'd think I'd know how to fly a plane by now. Nope. With added realism comes added complexity. But at least with Fly! there's no one attempting to kill you as you try to learn the difference between pitch and yaw. You can decide if that's a good or bad thing and choose your flight sim accordingly. Me? I'll call it bad, because although the graphics and audio are pretty sweet, they're not enough to compensate for the lack of action and the number of bugs you have to suffer through.

Still, the next time the pilots eat that bad fish and the flight attendants have to find a passenger with piloting skills, a seasoned Mac gamer will no doubt be the best person for the job. That is, of course, unless Flash Gordon is on board.

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December 02, 2008