Dawn Patrol - PC, 22/2/96
Dawn Patrol - PC
It's usually hard to get too danced-up about "budget classics". Your tenner normally buys you a five-minute lesson in unplayably clumsy graphics, and smashes your rose-tinted specs apart.
But what if the game in question had originally been way ahead of its time, and now the average hardware set-up has caught up, its hour has come?
That would be a little bit different.
Rowan's Dawn Patrol was one of the first flight sims to include an SVGA mode, you see.
But because it came out in 1994, it had to run on a 386/25 in the lower-detail modes, leaving the hi-res WW1 fly-bangs for the few blessed with 486 DX2s.
If we consult out feelers, we find out that this now means nearly all of us (except for HIM) can pick the top-notch graphic options. And see at last what P100 owners have seen in EF2000. Maybe.
In SVGA, Dawn Patrol's planes are a delight to behold - even when you get right up to the little Fokkers.
The terrains are hardly Flight Unlimited standard, but this just don't matter, man. You still get flashy toys like editing your own videos from the dozen or so camera views on offer.
Twenty planes, 90 missions, and a nice history-book mission structure. And how nice to welcome back two old friends: Mr Boot Disk and Dr System Crash!
Dawn Patrol - PC CD-ROM - by Empire/White Lab
Req: 386/25 580k!
Graphix: 87%
Sonix: 80%
Gameplay: 87%
Lifespan: 88%
Originality: 80%
Uppers: Lovely SVGA flight on a 486
Downers: Ah - those system crashes
Overall: 87% - Pauper troll
Do you know of any important moments from the annals of Digi history that have been omitted? If so, then mail me (superpage58@gmail.com) right now, man. Credit will be duly given for anything that gets put up.
