F29 Retaliator

The Good
This was the first full-priced I ever bought, so excuse me if I wax a little lyrical.

F29 boasted impressive graphics -- nice, fast, solid 3D -- with (for the time) well-defined models and good cockpit graphics. The battlezones were just as detailed (down to the palm trees in the Pacific!).

Two planes were provided -- the F-22 and the F-29 -- which could carry a wide variety of modern weapons, including some really fun ones to use, like the AGM-109H cruise missile and (my fave) the AIM-9X Backwinder, which was a nasty surprise for any MiGs on your tail!

The arcade flight model made it very easy to get into, and the missions got progressively harder, but not impossibly so -- a gentle learning curve. The aircraft handled well, and it was relatively easy to fight the enemy.

Each campaign (Middle East, Pacific and Europe) had a large number of preset missions, and you would have to complete a certain number to get the next "War Update" (the next set of missions). There was also a set of 10 training missions set in the Arizona desert.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game's simplicity was also one of its biggest weaknesses.

Both planes handled exactly the same, and could carry the same amount of weaponry, so the only difference between them was in what your plane looked like from the outside!

The weapons didn't behave anywhere near like they were described in the manual. The cruise missile couldn't be fired from its maximum range (370 miles): you just got the target in sight (about 10 miles), pointed the crosshairs and fired. Most of the air-to-ground weapons were fired in a similar fashion, and the air-to-air missiles were little better.

The manual was incomplete and poorly written and/or proofread (something the team would repeat with Epic).

Finally, the bugs: there were plenty of them, though they were ironed out in later releases. There weren't any horrendous "bring-the-game-to-a-crashing-halt" bugs, they were mostly annoying ones (like the "why-didn't-my-cruise-missile-dent-their-battleship?" one).

All-in-all the game felt like it was rushed out the door without being properly polished (not that that's unusual these days).

The Bottom Line
A quick, easy-to-learn, easy-to-play arcadey flight sim that's a good introduction to the genre. Prettier than Interceptor, and a heck of a lot of fun.