A short Fear The Bones review.

[nillefix]

Fear The Bones Campaign

 

If you like story-driven campaigns this one’s for you, if you love the F-14, this one’s definitely for you.

 Set in late 80’s, you’re an F-14 pilot deployed on the USS Theodore Roosevelt on a cruise in the Mediterranean when your port of call to Athen gets cancelled and you’re suddenly headed to the Black Sea to help out the USS Valley Forge that has ran into trouble.

 

You’re immediately thrown into action, with the first mission being a night carrier qualification and also a tutorial mission for how the campaign works.

 

Most mission are air to air since the Tomcat wasn’t cleared for air to ground work until early 90’s.

The mission are varied, from Alert 5 launches to planned CAP missions.

 

There is a LOT of radio dialogue during the missions, a lot of reference to 80’s movies.

Some might find the language offending but I think you have to treat this for what it is, entertainment, like you’re watching, or you’re in a movie.

 

This is an awesome campaign and Reflected really raised the bar with this one.  I really recommend this one! If you have the Zone 5 campaign, this is a must!

 

Fantastic work, Greg!!

 

Nick

[Reflected]

Thank you Nick, I'm happy you enjoyed it. I will share your review on FB and IG if you don't mind

[nillefix]

No problem. Go ahead.

[notproplayer3]

Quick question: top gun references are to be expected but is the dialogue still feeling realistic ? I still want to feel like I'm inside a simulator when playing this campaign . 

Edited June 27, 2021 by notproplayer3

[Reflected]

2 minutes ago, notproplayer3 said:

Quick question: top gun references are to be expected but is the dialogue still feeling realistic ? I still want to feel like I'm inside a simulator when playing this campaign . 

 

 

Of course they're not realistic. IRL naval aviators are professional, they don't chat about politics, world events, don't pull each others' legs, that's all Hollywood. If you want hard core realism go for Zone 5. If you want to feel like the hero of a fun Tomcat movie, go for this one.

[notproplayer3]

2 minutes ago, Reflected said:

 

Of course they're not realistic. IRL naval aviators are professional, they don't chat about politics, world events, don't pull each others' legs, that's all Hollywood. If you want hard core realism go for Zone 5. If you want to feel like the hero of a fun Tomcat movie, go for this one.

Alright haha, I see what you mean. 

Though other than the unrealistic casual chatting, are the communications and procedures still real or is there none of that? 

Basically I'm asking if the campaign dialogue is anything like rising squall or not (if it is overall somewhat believable or not at all). 

[Reflected]

I have not played Rising Squall so I cannot compare. But I can tell you that apart from the Hollywood chit-chat all other comms and procedures as quite realistic.

[nillefix]

I’d say that the only ”unrealistic” in this campaign is that the casual chatter moved from the ready room to the intra-flight radio. The flying is top notch with cold and dark cockpit, checklists, comms, Case I-III procedures.

[notproplayer3]

Thanks a lot for your responses, I just wanted a believable campaign for the f14 so it's perfect ! 

[GunSlingerAUS]

Just picked this up - load into first mission and get 40fps on the deck. I usually get 60-70. Is performance going to be an ongoing issue in this campaign, or just this area?

[Reflected]

That depends on your settings, your pc and on which dcs update you have installed. 
 

generally speaking, fps gets lower on populated flight decks. I wish I had 40…
 

see point 7:

 

 

[Aisxos]

On 6/27/2021 at 11:17 AM, notproplayer3 said:

Basically I'm asking if the campaign dialogue is anything like rising squall or not (if it is overall somewhat believable or not at all). 

It's not. Now I'm one of the people that low-key enjoyed "rising squall", mainly because they managed to do what no other mission maker has in DCS: Add checkpoints and make the campaign feel like an actual game. That said, the dialogue was -beyond- cringe even for an avid anime watcher...

No. Fear the bones is 100% pure tomcattery, or at least how I imagine it would be. A lot of attention has been paid to capture the 'top gun movie spirit' so sometimes it might feel forced, but i mean, come on. It's top gun. You cannot go wrong with top gun references while flying the damn f14

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this campaign, and can see myself repeating several of its missions in the future. The only downsides to it is really DCS itself, and its limitations, which we all more or less have learned to live with or work around by now.

The only  downside I found in the campaign itself is, it ends, and I'm left wanting more! I immediately bought 'zone 5' and cannot wait to throw more money at Reflected the second they make another f14 campaign~

[notproplayer3]

3 hours ago, Aisxos said:

It's not. Now I'm one of the people that low-key enjoyed "rising squall", mainly because they managed to do what no other mission maker has in DCS: Add checkpoints and make the campaign feel like an actual game. That said, the dialogue was -beyond- cringe even for an avid anime watcher...

No. Fear the bones is 100% pure tomcattery, or at least how I imagine it would be. A lot of attention has been paid to capture the 'top gun movie spirit' so sometimes it might feel forced, but i mean, come on. It's top gun. You cannot go wrong with top gun references while flying the damn f14

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this campaign, and can see myself repeating several of its missions in the future. The only downsides to it is really DCS itself, and its limitations, which we all more or less have learned to live with or work around by now.

The only  downside I found in the campaign itself is, it ends, and I'm left wanting more! I immediately bought 'zone 5' and cannot wait to throw more money at Reflected the second they make another f14 campaign~

Ohh don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved rising squall too, yeah it was perhaps cringy, but not much more so than the questionable Anime I already watch so I was right at home you could say.

In any case it has been quite some time between my last post on this thread and now so I must say that I finally didn't buy the fear the bones campaign exactly because of that top gun influence. I actually quite like that film but frankly speaking, I find the "f14 culture" more insulting to the legacy of the f14 than anything. 

However, I did play the zone5 campaign and this is the campaign I've wanted, not embracing the cheesy, cringy "over Americanised" universe of the f14 and being instead a realistic view on the f14 which was a plane that had it's quirks and features rather than the God plane some top gun fanboys seem to want to make us believe. 

In any case, rant over, I just had to get the f14 top gunny fanboyism critique off my chest

No disrespect to the fear the bones campaign, I'm sure it's great, the whole setting for the campaign is just not my cup of tea. 

Edited January 24, 2022 by notproplayer3

[Reflected]

Yeah these are 2 totally different campaigns. Zone 5 has zero Hollywoodisms, and it's about pure realism. Some love it, but some users complain that it's monotonous and boring. Duh. Real life is like that.

Fear the Bones was meant to be Hollywood cheese, I got all the 80s Tomcat fanboism out of my system. Some love it because of that, but some complain it's cheese. Duh.  (then again, the procedures are still pretty realistic and challenging. It's no 'Ace Combat' by any means)

BTW my 3rd Tomcat campaign will also be 100% realistic. A hardcore RAG training campaign with Paco. No Hollywood cliches, and even the familiarization flight will make you guys sweat, but it will teach you how to fly the Tomcat properly

[Jayhawk1971]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Reflected:

Yeah these are 2 totally different campaigns. Zone 5 has zero Hollywoodisms, and it's about pure realism. Some love it, but some users complain that it's monotonous and boring. Duh. Real life is like that.

Fear the Bones was meant to be Hollywood cheese, I got all the 80s Tomcat fanboism out of my system. Some love it because of that, but some complain it's cheese. Duh.  (then again, the procedures are still pretty realistic and challenging. It's no 'Ace Combat' by any means)

BTW my 3rd Tomcat campaign will also be 100% realistic. A hardcore RAG training campaign with Paco. No Hollywood cliches, and even the familiarization flight will make you guys sweat, but it will teach you how to fly the Tomcat properly

I have to say, I didn't think there were too many Hollywoodisms in Fear the Bones, anyway. Sure it captures the late 80's feeling, and 80's movies, but it's certainly not "Over the Top" (see what I did there?  ). Anyway, apart from the final two missions, the campaign is still pretty much anchored in plausible scenarios. Sure, the ready room banter has been transferred to the cockpit (and where else would you put it with the absence of a Ready Room?!), but it's not at all overdone.

I did enjoy it very much, as it struck a good balance between simulation and entertainment. DCS in general is way too sterile anyway, and campaigns such as Fear the Bones IMO capture some of the good old days of combat simulation gaming, titles from Microprose, Jane's Combat simulations and others.

The icing on the already delicious cake would have been a "campaign branching" for replayability, where the second to last mission could have had a different outcome (maybe when you play it a second time, you don't get the scripted ending) that would lead to a different final mission, but I don't know if that's currently even possible in DCS, and of course it would change the story arc you've crafted.

Spoiler

For example, Jaws and Jester successfully take down the podium, evade the "scripted" SAM and make it back to the carrier. Final mission would be one last "boring" CAP with Elvis, where they intercept the same TU-95 Bear from the second mission, but the cease-fire is in place and they exchange friendly banter (thank God the war is over, have a Vodka on me, enjoy your skinny photo models, Yankee....) as they fly into the sunset.   

Looking very much forward to your RAG campaign. 

[rollnloop]

Just finished it, short review:

Just like Jayhawk1971, bar the last two missions I didn't feel too much "hollywoodism" in it, enjoyed the banter that had about every reference one can have in the Tomcat culture of that era.

 

It's a bit sad that DCS as it evolves always manage to break missions (and planes, sometimes), four at least were affected with various DCS bugs. Continuing was still possible thanks to a clever campaign progress, and a tip on this forum for alert 5 mission. I bought the ww2 campaigns and didn't play yet, so I hope ED didn't break those too much.

 

A few missions were too long (80,90, 120 mins !!!!), and were difficult to shorten via time acceleration without missing on some dialogue.

 

Overall quite worth my money, well done Reflected.