AV-8B Harrier Assault

Simis, the company which actually coded AV8R Harrier Assault has, in the past produced games which are, to be kind, playably challenged. MiG 29 Fulcrum was, by all accounts, an accurate flight model of an unusual aircraft. The problem was that the variety of missions was limited and the graphic presentation left a lot to be desired. The follow-up, AV8B Harrier Assault was a huge improvement, offering a mission planner of a complexity to rival that of Falcon 3 coupled with an acceptably accurate flight model and a huge variety of missions. The graphics were nothing really spectacular, although they were probably no less acceptable than those in similar simulators available at the time. The biggest problem was the interface for mission planning, which was about as intuitive and user-friendly as your average EEC policy document.

Now Domark has addressed one of the most trivial niggles with the original game and produced an svga version. To be more specific, it has produced a VESA SVGA version. If your card does not support vesa, as with many earlier svga cards, you will notice no difference at all. Having said that, the graphics of the original were really not that bad (apart from the steadfast refusal of Simis to include shadows and their omission of decent external views). The net result is the smoothing out of the ground contours and the improvement of the already good sky rendering. Otherwise, there is little obvious difference. There are certainly games on the market which are better presented graphically. There are also some complete turkeys masquerading as flight sims. AV8B gives you masses of playability and, despite the remaining irritations, this is no turkey.