Flight Unlimited 3's Renegade is a superb machine who can land on land and water! Landing on water is easy and the plane is so trusty that you even perform some violent maneuvers..
FU3's challenges are great fun, being the best mix of simulation and action yet delivered! The picture is from the "Criminal Fighters" mission.
Visor is a Quake 3 bot with a horse's face or something like that. Easy bot.
Another one bites the dust...
Flight Unlimited 3 teaches you to fly
It seems that Microsoft is losing the hardcore flight simulators war to Flight Unlimited 3 [FU3].
FU3 looks better than MS's Flight Simulator 2000, but it is not just its pretty face that makes it out of the ordinary. While offering less planes to fly, FU3 can concentrate on more accessible flight controls. This does NOT mean that the flight control model is less realistic, it just means that because there is no need to worry with very complicated planes, such as a Concorde :), you will never have to worry with five times redundant control panels... Have you ever seen a Concorde's flight panel?! Ouch!
FU3 handles just perfect, renders the most impressive graphics you will find, and it couldn't be more realistic on terrain rendering! If you have a SUPER PC [P3@700 / 1 GB RAM / very fast graphics hardware, and so on...] you might have the specs to try the game with ALL the objects ON, and that surely is impressive! Hundreds of square miles around Seattle have been photographed and accurately used in the simulator.
Of course that being a very realistic flight simulator, FU3 can be boring for those who expect to board a plane and have guns to destroy every building... There are no guns, sure, and sometimes the distances will require you to fly for 15 minutes or even hours, if you draw your own flight plan between far airports. Flying by night or with too much clouds can also bring you a very monotonous display, since you'll probably see nothing more than punctual lights... but that is exactly what happens in real life!, and of course if such conditions rise, flying will only be secure using the virtual horizon instrument, and keeping an eye on all the supporting devices.
The "game" has superb tutorials on flying, and while I don't believe you can just go and pick the trusty Renegade to fly from A to B, just like that, I firmly believe that you will "only" be missing the real life feedback of the real plane, because the basics and much more than the basics... are truly taught here!
Despite having no guns, FU3 has "challenges", and all of them are simply superb! Go intercept a boat, go save some kids, take some scientist to film the Yeti or a Volcano, or just perform stunts on aerial courses.
If you do enjoy flying, FU3 is unlimited. This is a fun package for life!, or at least until FU4 :)
Quake 3 Test Demo bots revisited
Playing Quake 3 Test Demo [Q3] @ a difficulty level harder than the first two, is a task that will frustrate all players, except the very best. From the "hurt me plenty" level, you are to face bots that simply don't feel human at all, since they hardly miss a shot, they jump a lot, have no interest on the architecture, and never stop to frame you... they are always on the move.
BUT even someone like me, with only some 30 minutes of Q3 playing time, can win them on wide open levels. Long distance killings are much easier! It seems that the bots quit on aiming @ you, if you are very far away! How human, right?
I've also noticed that you stand a much higher chance of winning a map, if the bots are to face other bots. If it just you against a single bot, then it will be almost impossible for you to win, unless you invest loads of time on the game; but if it is you against some 4 adversaries, you can plan a path to victory, by chasing bots until the moment they engage combat: they will NOT turn against you until one of them drops dead! Again, how human, right?
Quake 3 Arena is now gold, and the much hyped John Carmack already stated that Q3 is his best Quake, in the sense that the final product delivers much of what he wanted to deliver. It is certain that magazines will love Q3 and write titles such as "the best game ever"... However the truth is that these bots are too hard and not too human.
Let's wait for the final product. It surely will be a super game, but I am not expecting it to be better than Unreal Tournament. Check the 22 November 1999 update.
Homeworld patch #2 [2019 KB]
Hidden and Dangerous patch 1.3 [4239 KB]
Delta Force 2 patch 1.03.01 [3346 KB]
Unreal Tournament @ 221199
Quake 3 Arena @ 221199 ; 271199
Delta Force 2 @ 161199
AoE2 @ 250799 ; 311099 ; 021199 ; 051199 ; 101199
Revolt @ 201099 ; 221099 ; 271099
Flight Unlimited 3 @ 271099 ; 271199
Driver @ 271099 ; 021199 ; 051199 ; 081199
Nascar Legends @ 101199
M25 @ 131199
Extreme Mountain Biking @ 131199
GTA2 @ 141199
the truth about the patch @ 270999 ; 280999 ; 091099
Creatures @ GIL ; SW Agents Paper ; 160399 ; 170399 ; 140499
Delta Force @ 020599 ; 050599 ; 130599
Half Life @ 030699
Aliens versus Predator @ 130799 ; 150799 ; 250799 ; 050899
Kingpin @ 060899
Simcity 3000 @ 200899 ; 260899
Hidden & Dangerous @ 110999 ; 140999 ; 170999 ; 21099
Roller coaster Tycoon @ 061099 ; 101099 ; 111099
Sega Rally 2 @ 111099
GP500 @ 161099
Apache Havoc @ 181099
Landing on very short spaces is the challenge brought by some missions. Here you have to land the Renegade "where no one ever did it before", in order to pick a up a ranger that will help you find some lost kids. It is very hard to land there...
Graphics are just spectacular, using *only* real life terrain photos, taken over USA's Seattle. FU3 does teach you to fly!
Grunt is usually harder to shot than Visor, yet he is a piece of cake on wide open levels, even @ pre nightmare difficulty setting. Almost impossible to beat on claustrophobic maps.
Jumpers are surfaces that will make you jump very high. Strange stuff.