F/A-18 Precision Strike Fighter, one of the most realistic flight Sims ever engineered.  Everything you could imagine in a combat flight sim is here. Pilot twenty-eight built-in missions or create your own with the powerful mission designer. Fly head to head or in teams over the internet-up to four players. Destroy enemy air defense, maintain air superiority, support ground units and destroy hostile aircraft.

F/A-18 Precision Strike Fighter boasts Challenging air to air combat, realistic carrier operations, extensive armament options and a powerful mission designer.  There is so much to the game that novice flight sim fans will find this plethora of options and detail to flight possibly overwhelming…quite honestly its hard as hell if your not a flight veteran.  Plan on about a 2-3 hour learning curve.

To the developer’s credit the tutorials are very helpful, with much needed tactics and how-tos, but the monologue is quite monotone.  The down side is the terminology is geared to people who already know flight lingo.  To the average 15 year old, the tutorials and manual will read and sound like stereo instructions.  With an estimate of over an hour worth of tutorials, before even attempting to try the tutorial missions, you can see where the long learning curve comes into play.  With the tons of hot keys that are present, a hotkey overlay or even a cheat sheet would have been nice, but must be viewed or copied at the Xicat website.

Amongst the features, the stunning graphics are decent at best, some of the detail is quite nice, but overall I found that some of the terrain and explosions were quite blocky compared to today’s standards, the plus side is that the game played rather smoothly.  I even gave it a whirl on my old 350Mhz machine and it ran great.  But when you have a P4, I would like to see some games that use the latest and greatest technology.

Installation: Easy

Gameplay: 6
Tough for the beginner, but die hard flight sim fans will probably get more out of this. 

Graphics: 7
Though it promises all these wonderful graphics, and the screen shots are quite impressive, I would say that overall they are decent at best.

Sound: 7
Not too bad, but nothing new here. 

Difficulty: 10
I would give the basics about 2-3 hour learning curve.  I would strongly advise to read the 163 page manual and copy the hot key sheet from the Xicat website.

Concept: 6
The box even says that this is an enhanced version of F/A 18 Korea. With that in mind, and what other flight Sims including this bring us, nothing new here.

Multiplayer:
Exists, but was not experienced at time of review.

Overall: 6.0
Just to cumbersome to enjoy