FIRST OVER GERMANY

 In FIRST OVER GERMANY (FOG), you command a B-17, the famous "flying fortress"
bomber of World War II. The game offers several training missions, starting with
gunnery practice and formation flying, and ending with a transatlantic flight to
England. Once in England, you and your crew will perform 25 combat missions, all
taken from the actual missions of the 306th Bomber Group. (This review is based
on the IBM-PC version.)

 FOG is without a doubt the crudest simulation of flight in a commercial game
today. The only "three-dimensional views" in the game are those that depict
attacking aircraft, and they're laughably reminiscent of simple home arcade
games of 10 years ago. The most common screen display is an overhead view of the
B-17 or B-17 formation above an ugly approximation of the local terrain.

 While FOG does support EGA graphics, the images are so poorly drawn, and the
color choices so terrible, that you'll suspect you're playing in CGA mode. For
example, most land appears as solid yellow, dotted with sporadic black V's --
perhaps to represent wheat fields? The sound quality is awful as well,
consisting of a constant engine drone, an occasional warning tone, and a muted
"brat" when you fire on enemy planes.

 The action itself is terribly dull and mechanical. The bombing missions, though
directed at different targets, share a monotonous similarity. On each mission,
you take off, join formation, fly to the target, shoot at enemy fighters, bomb
the target, return to base, and land.

 Shooting at attacking planes is particularly frustrating. First you must select
which of the flying fortress's seven machine gun positions you'll use. Should
you select a position from which you can't see the plane, or should the chosen
gun be out of commission, you're out of luck: The fighter gets a free attack.
(Apparently, the rest of the crew is asleep.)

 Fortunately, selecting a gun from the attack angle (i.e., 9 o'clock high)
becomes fairly automatic after a while. On any of the guns, though, the
crosshairs move incredibly slowly, eliminating player skill entirely. Either
it's very easy to line up the gun before the fighter attacks, or it's
impossible. Most of the time, your fire will have no effect, even if it's
perfectly on target. While this is fairly realistic (since the B-17s relied for
protection more on massed formation firepower than individual gunnery skill), it
makes for a terrible game.

 Flight isn't much better. Without the cockpit views of other flight games,
flying degenerates into watching your current X,Y position, heading, and
altitude. Bombing is largely a matter of waiting for the bombsight to read 0,0
and hoping the flak doesn't blow you out of the air. Landing is the only
difficult part, since 70 MPH crosswinds seem to be common at the airbase. Of
course, they only apply to the approach, not the actual landing.

 The IBM version of FOG relies on an off-disk protection scheme that's invoked
only once per game. The program requires DOS 2.0 or higher and 384K of RAM. It
supports CGA or EGA graphics adaptors, but no sound cards. My copy of the game
was supplied on 5-1/4" disks; there was no indication that 3-1/2" disks are
available.

 In short, FIRST OVER GERMANY lacks excitement, and asks for no hard decisions
or arcade skill. Not recommended.

 FIRST OVER GERMANY is published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and distributed
by Electronic Arts.

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