Independence Day

"A great flight simulator with increasingly harder missions."

-Graphics 7/10-
I thought that they graphics were done very nicely. You can fly by the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., the Statue of Liberty in New York, and many other famous place all looking very nice. The planes themselves are nothing too amazing but the shields on the alien ships popping up every time they are hit is a nice effect.

-Sound 6/10-
The machine guns, the lasers, the missiles! Actual sounds from the movie. Sometimes. The machine guns are a little weak and the missiles only sound like the movie sometimes. Weird. Explosions are pretty run of the mill.

-Control 7/10-
The controls are actually very good and give the feel of flying an actual plane... except when banking or diving. It is really easy to bank higher than you wanted or dive lower than you wanted.

-Gameplay 9/10-
Game play is good. The missions are harder each time and the planes and alien ships are actually true to their stats. Just like in the movie it is hard to get a lock on one on purpose because there are so many of them and they fly very quickly and very well. Of course they are not impossible to hit at all either. There is plenty of neat stuff to find too. Special weapons, new planes, bonus rooms. Watch out for the force field though (it's on your radar).

-Overall 8/10-
This game deserves a high score. Some people find it annoying to keep hitting buildings. They don't realize that they can't fly through skyscrapers full throttle turn and not expect to hit a building. Slow down and fly higher is what common sense tells you. There are tons of enemies and you have a partner (unfortunately he doesn't do much). The cities are beautiful. The only real problem I found with the game is even if you have a lock, shoot a missile, and still have a lock sometimes the missile will fly straight and not chase your target at all. All the other ''problems'' with this game are due to the fact that this is a good flight sim because it is very close to real life. For example, in multiplayer mode you can look at your radar, see that the enemy is right in front of you, and by the time you look back at the screen he has already past you and is half turned around trying to get a lock on you. The planes are just to fast to rely on the radar heavily in close quarters combat. In summary, this is a great game if you like true to life flight sims.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/01, Updated 09/24/01