In contrast, Kevin Bezant, one of the designers who worked on Feral Interactive’s helicopter simulator Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs. Hokum for developer Razorworks, says that the game’s campaigns “were based on potential flash points. I usually avoided any current issues or anything considered to be in bad taste, but it’s a fine line.”

Enemy Position Spotted. Use your missiles to take out the enemy from afar.

Digital Fabric

Both games, however, find common ground in two areas: both strive to accurately simulate air combat — F/A-18 tackling fighter jets and Enemy Engaged addressing helicopters — and both used publicly available satellite data to create realistic maps for players to fly over. In fact, Razorworks and GraphSim encountered similar problems trying to stitch the satellite data into cohesive landscapes.

“Just like Jay Leno said in his monologue: ‘F/A-18: OIF is so realistic that you can play the game for years and never find weapons of mass destruction.’ I still laugh at that one.”

- Jeff Morgan, president, GraphSim

“All of our data was gathered from different satellites, all at different angles in space,” explains Bezant. “So river data from one database might not exactly match the terrain in the elevation map — it could go uphill instead. Our main criterion was that the terrain had to be good helicopter country: hilly but not too mountainous, and not too flat.”

Full Throttle. A copter roars into action.

“It all required a great deal of manipulation,” agrees Morgan. “Not only was a great deal of stitching required to put together the pieces, but large black boxes covered intelligence-sensitive areas, so we had to recreate those. Getting the data was easy. Making it look good was a real chore.”

You Have No Choice But to Accept It

F/A-18 and Enemy Engaged also converge in their use of missions to drive the gameplay. In F/A-18, you’re a fighter pilot tasked with destroying enemy aircraft and surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, escorting other planes and more. Sometimes you’ll fly solo and other times you’ll have a few fellow pilots on your wings, ready to watch your back as long as you watch theirs. An editor allows you to design your own missions and trade them with friends.

Take a Seat. The in-game controls mimic those of a real helicopter.

Enemy Engaged offers three main campaigns starring its titular helicopters, which represent the United States (Comanche) and Russia (Hokum). The campaigns imagine such scenarios as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after the Taiwan Independence Party scores resounding victories in an election. With the Chinese employing Russian equipment, the Americans scramble a task force to the island in an attempt to turn back the invaders.

F/A-18: OIF is available from GraphSim Entertainment.

The campaigns in the game are open-ended, each featuring a series of smaller battles that you can view through the mission planning screen, with events dictated by the computer-controlled vehicles’ actions. Bezant says that “the campaigns will play differently every time. The AI units react to the current situation and make decisions based on it. For example, if a base is running low on supplies, it will generate a request for a re-supply. If a transport is available it will accept the task, but if its route takes it through hostile airspace it will request an escort. And so on. None of this is scripted.”

Roger That. Monitor your read-outs to make sure you follow the course dictated by your mission.

“One of the challenges of having a massive dynamic campaign, as opposed to single scripted missions,” he adds, “was making sure the player didn’t feel like a tiny cog in a massive military machine. The player should know how his successes or failures are affecting the overall campaign.”

“One of the challenges of having a massive dynamic campaign was making sure the player didn’t feel like a tiny cog in a massive military machine.”

- Kevin Bezant, designer, Enemy Engaged

For Bragging Rights

Of course, no war video game is complete without the ability to take on live opponents, and both games also oblige in that area. F/A-18 has six multi-player modes that run the gamut from a basic deathmatch or team deathmatch in the sky to missions that require one team of players to attack a site while the other defends. Up to four gamers can compete on a LAN or over the Internet, including GameRanger, in a unique theater of operations called NAS Fallon.

The Mission is the Plane. You can always follow a wing-mate if you’re not sure which direction to head.

Likewise, Enemy Engaged offers LAN- and GameRanger-based multi-player action as you and your friends split into teams to duke it out. Instead of a full-fledged campaign, you can select a skirmish, which is a mini-campaign that takes place in a small portion of the map.

So pick your favorite mode of aerial combat — or, better yet, choose both — and fly high on your Mac. Just remember, it’s all fantasy; civilians don’t have to mop up virtual blood, defuse your duds with virtual bodies or rebuild virtual houses like they do in the real world.

If you liked these games, check out:

• America’s Army: Special Forces
• Battlefield 1942: Deluxe Edition
• Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
• Call of Duty
• Medal of Honor: Breakthrough
• World War II Online
• X-Plane