Ever since I first played Falcon 3 many, many years ago, I have loved the fast realistic action of a dogfight in a super high tech jet fighter. Falcon 4 set the standards of flight sims of this genre for quite some time, and the only competitor to come even close was DID (Digital Integration). Now Rage has acquired DID and finally it bears fruit in the shape of this rather novel sim.

Eurofighter Typhoon is a bit clever, in that you control the very lives of a group of pilots. Your first task in the game is to choose the pilots that you will control, putting their lives in your hands! Once a campaign has is underway, moving the mouse to the lower regions of the screen will cause the pilot menu to pop up. Six, pilot-shaped buttons will let you know what each person is doing at any given time. At the start, all of them will be chilling out reading the paper or playing pool. Speed up time and missions will begin to appear on a list at the top of the screen. Watch, as one of your pilots attends the mission briefing. Marvel, as he/she taxis onto the runway. Gasp, as you jump into his or her head, Exorcist-style, and take control of the shiny new Eurofighter. Alternatively, you could go back to watching the other pilots chilling out; leaving the flying to someone who knows what they're doing. Eurofighter Typhoon is aimed squarely at the fair-to-middling flight sim buff - the sort who will be relieved to know that you can jump out of one pilot during a tricky landing, and straight into another who's just taking off on another sortie. The problem I found with this system is that sometimes I just wanted to pick a mission, and do it, rather than wait for the game to decide, once 10 minutes later (even in accelerated time), there was a mission take. I could have taken some of the missions twice, but I didn't want to. The overall situation is constantly updated by means of convincing news bulletins and before you know it you're in the middle of a full-blown war. The fact that you're hopping between pilots, involved in multiple missions simultaneously, really helps to create the kind of mad panic you'd expect under the circumstances. Another problem was that sometimes there were two different missions going at the same time, and I couldn't keep up by swapping between pilots, which in the end caused me to fail both missions.

This has been developed with a console release in mind, and as such a forgiving flight model is sure to delight the softcore pilots amongst us, as will the fact that Rage ask you to use only half the keyboard to fly the thing (plus joystick, of course). For the hardcore flight sim buffs this is a disappointment. Would it have been so hard to make it more realistic and have an option to tone down the realism. As it stands on the most realistic setting, it was just too easy to fly, but the enemy competition seemed on their toes. I manages to get shot down too many times in the early missions, which made me lose interest in the game too early on, rather than drawing me in to the campaign. The AI was obviously pretty good, but as a simplistic flight sim, I feel it slightly odd that I run out of fuel on the second training mission, after only flying for a short period, and I didn't even use afterburner. The Graphics are superb, with highly detailed planes, and terrain. Eurofighter Typhoon looks the business, its just a pity the airports and ground objects looked like an after thought. The jet sound in 'flyby' view is second to none, and really adds to the feel of the planes dynamics.

The campaigns are the best part of the game. They are all very well scripted war scenarios and the news bulletins adds to the realism

Overall

Eurofighter Typhoon is a well constructed game that tries to push the envelope of flight sims to the limit. Unfortunately some of the ideas sound neat on paper, but don't really work. What this game lacks in realism, interface, and mission select method, it makes up for in graphics, sound, and brilliant campaigns. If your a hardened flight sim buff, stay clear unless you like eye candy, but for the average gamer wanting fun rather than realism in your flight sims, then this is for you.