Terror In The Air PC CD MS Flight Simulator game add-on

Terror In The Air is a flight adventure add-on for Microsoft's Flight Simulator 95/98. Terrorists have armed a nuclear device in New York City (or Paris or Washington) and are demanding the return of their leader and a $10 million ransom. Your mission is to use your ADF as a guide as you fly around the city collecting the ransom money in $2 million chunks located in strategically placed armored trucks. Return the money to the terrorists in 30 minutes or there's no reason to come back at all!

From the standpoint of complexity, Terror is a simple game. It's easy to understand and follow. The challenge of the game is two-fold - flight skills and time management.

There are several key elements to successfully completing your mission. As you will soon find out, it is necessary to have fairly competent flying skills to even come close. Low level flying is the order of the day with maximum altitudes of about 300 feet AGL. Any higher than that and you enter a thin (but dense) fog level which obscures the ground completely. As the object of the game is to find the armored trucks, which usually are at ground level, you must stay below this fog to see them.

Primary navigation is by ADF with each truck having its own frequency. Throughout the game, you move from truck to truck gathering up the ransom money. A touch and go is all that is required to "snag" the ransom with your "tail hook". As a matter of personal experience, a touch and go is all the time you have between trucks. After failing my mission several times (the running voice commentary called me a "Loser"!), I tossed all real-time power management to the wind and moved from point to point at full throttle. This made for fairly achievable times but very interesting landings! If nothing else, FS98 has captured the "balloon" flight characteristics of the full scale Cessna 182 quite accurately!

If you're successful in collecting all of the ransom, you're vectored back to the airport to meet the terrorist's helicopter. Oh yeah, by the way, delivering just the money won't do ... you've got to pick up a bomb defuser along the way too. Whatever you do, make sure you're back in 30 minutes ... or else!

Since the main gaming engine is FS98, additional aircraft selection is possible. I also tried the mission using the Bell Jet Ranger which makes for a fairly straight forward game, providing you're an accomplished rotor wing pilot! Although easier to pick your spots with a helicopter, if you're prone to crashing on landings, better practice up first before you try and tackle the extra pressure of the 30 minute clock! Besides, there's plenty of room for the fixed wing approaches.

The chatter of ATC (called "mission control") adds to the excitement and pressure during the game. Other pilots and ground personnel are heard throughout the game as they try and decode radio transmissions or spy on the terrorists. As you approach the final minutes, ATC will constantly berate you to hurry with phrases like ".....what are you doing out there? I suggest you fly faster!". If you fail your mission, you will be publicly chastised!

If you're tired of flying patterns in FS98 (or FSFW95), Terror will break up the monotony! There are three different scenery areas, each with their own degree of difficulty. I could not honestly determine much difference between the three. Washington (the most difficult) did have a truck near a bridge, but it wasn't all that difficult to set up a close approach. The audio track is rather repetetive and becomes kind of "ho-hum" after a while. The same basic scenario and chatter is used from city to city with the name of the city substituted in each case. However, not to worry, the "fun" of Terror is flying with a purpose! If you enjoy a challenge, Terror will provide you with hours of entertainment.

For Windows & MS Flight Simulator 95/98