To keep up with the inexorable advancement of technology, Domark have heavily updated their well-known MiG-29 sim. But what real difference does an 'M' make?

It may seem slightly odd for Domark to be releasing another MiG-29 simulation less than a year after their original game of very nearly the same name, but there is some justification. Since the first fighter game - simply MiG-29 Fulcrum - popped onto our screens, the aircraft's Russian manufacturer Mikoyen has built a faster, more advanced machine called (you may have guessed by now) the MiG-29M Super Fulcrum. And it makes a pretty sexy subject for a flight sim - the plane's as good (if not better) than anything the Americans have got, by all accounts, it's got an air of mystery about it; and it's fun turning the tables on the normal flight sim set up where MiGs are depicted as cannon fodder, flown by horrible Communists or the pawns of brutal Middle Eastern dictators.

There is a problem with this, of course. I mentioned that the planet's got an air of mystery about it, but that's understating it a bit - I don't suppose anybody outside of the Soviet airforce, the CIA or similar really know all that much about it at all. It's hard to simulate something when you don't know what it can do, which means guesswork is going to come into things rather more than is ideal. A big problem for programmers Simis, then, despite their British Aerospace backgrounds - until you realise that the guys at MicroProse or wherever really know all that much about the real capabilities of western fighters either. No matter whose sim it is, we have to take a lot on trust and treat it as a game, which is what it is. The bottom line has to be not how supposedly accurate or non-accurate it is, but how much fun it is to play.

The problem with the first MiG 29 - for people like us who are games players, not hardcore military hardware freaks - was that it was ultimately too techie and concerned with scrupulous accuracy, and not enough into being simple fun to use. The shortage of missions and severe lack of ground detail - all often the flat blue sky and flat green ground made it look like nothing not so much as a Speccy game - meant our interest flagged fast, and we'd go looking for our thrills in F-15 Strike Eagle II, Their Finest Hour or F-29.

Hardcare flight sim fans tended to disagree though - despite the initially dull look, it was actually faster and smoother than just about anything else, handled beautifully and had very realistic (in as much as any of us can tell what 'realistic' is) dog fights. A game more for the expert armchair pilot than the shoot-'em-up freaks amongst us then.

So how's this new game different? Well, if you boot up both MiG games and play them side by side (the joy of having lots of office Amigas!) there's no doubting that the sequel boasts more power and speed than the first game - and that's actually saying something! You've got a full electronic Head Up Display too - instead of the old (and quaintly old fashioned) analogue style instruments of the first game - and generally it comes across as a more sophisticated fly.

It's not just the plane that's been tweaked either. Instead of flying a set rota of missions, our pilot is now involved in a full scale military confrontation set in a South African country, threatened by some bully beef of a neighbour. As the war progresses, so does his (i.e. your) role in the peace-keeping force, the narrative link making each mission seem more involving because you know it all adds up in the general scheme of things. That this is an interesting twist on events, and a vast improvement on the first game, there's little doubt.

Perhaps more exciting however is the new two computer link option, allowing you to fly head to head combat against a mate. I couldn't actually get this function to work the time I tried it, but there's every possibility that I was just being crap, and forgot to put the right lead into the right socket or something. (Actually, I have never yet been able to link two computers for a game without the whole operation turning into a fiasco). The manual is hardly illuminating on this subject so I gave up after a couple of hours of trying - let's just assume that it's really brilliant (which I'm sure it is), but that, like me, not many of you are going to take advantage of it all that often.

There's a bit of a problem with reviewing flight sims at the moment - sooner or later you've got to draw the comparison with MicroProse's glorious F-15 Strike Eagle II, and not too many games come out of it looking any rosier than when they went in. Now it's MiG-29M's turn and, well, let's be frank, I don't like it anywhere near as much as the MicroProse game. It's not as shoot-'em-uppy, it's nowhere near as pretty and you don't get as great a sense of being in control or (most importantly) of it being a friendly game to get into. For an average person into having fun with a flight sim I'd recommend the (five pounds cheaper!) Strike Eagle every time, while for the beginner I'd say hey, why not go for the ancient (but still jolly good!) F/A18 Interceptor at ten quid instead?

However, if you're either of these sorts of people, MiG 29M isn't really aimed at you anyway. This is for the plane buffs and technology freaks out there instead, and it has to be said that in technical accuracy it impresses at every turn. Super Fulcrum is a right handful at first, and just staying in the air is about the most you'll manage to do on your first few flights, but practise long and hard and you'll slowly find yourself getting drawn into it. You'll have to put up with the fact that you're unlikely to be battling it out with baddies two minutes after leaving the runway (as you might be used to) or that all the navigation stuff has to be taken into account even if you detest that part of flight games but - hey! - that's what flying a real plane is like, I guess.

Unfortunately though, one old MiG 29 problem remains. The smooth and fast way the plane handles is still at the expense of the look of the thing - while it's been improved here, ground detail is still well short of what we've come to expect. Yes, you'll come across individual targets, (obstacles like mountain ranges, navigational landmarks like rivers) but incidental detail simply does not exist. Even while you're flying at a reasonably low level you get the feeling that you're over an empty green wasteland; just the sort of thing programmers were striving to avoid five years ago. In fact, when you consider how entertainment driven Domark usually are, it's a very odd sort of product for them to be publishing at all.

A few traditional shoot-'em-uppy flight sim things I miss are: a) You can't tweak the enemy's level of competence, b) You can't give yourself unlimited ammunition and weapons. (Mind you, the standard weapons on offer do make up a fantastic set of fireworks.) c) You can't access the map unless you're on the ground (This may be frightfully 'like the real thing', but it can make life pretty bloomin' irritating when you're just trying to have a little bit of fun).

However, quibbling about this stuff might be out of order - I do get the feeling that this game isn't really aimed at the likes of me at all. For the technically minded flight simer this - even at £40! - could prove a very good buy. The trouble is, it isn't a game that's been designed to be fun per se, and while many people will love it, I suspect that some, attracted by the subject rather than the software, will be in for a rather confusing time.

1. It looks almost the same as the MiG-29 from the outside, because the external design is still considered to be perfect.

2. The MiG-29 can compete head on with the best of the Western fighter alternatives. However, they're reputedly extremely difficult to handle, and poorly trained pilots often end up getting killed.

3. The MiG-29 was originally designed nearly twenty years ago, after earlier MiG's had taken a bit of a pounding in Vietnam. The Super Fulcrum should be in proper service within two or three years.

4. The pilot of a Fulcrum can aim missiles by simply moving his head - there's a computer in his helmet (Blimey!).

5. It has a flight ceiling of 56,000 feet and a maximum speed in excess of Mach 2.4 (i.e. pretty blooming fast).

Uppers: There's plenty to separate this from its predecessor. The aircraft, the enemies, and the missions are more sophisticated and challenging (quite how they originally thought it might work as a missions disk for the first MiG I don't know). A real delight for tech heads.

Downers: That accuracy seems to have been achieved at the expense of good old-fashioned fun and prettiness. The landscape has been improved, but it's still a way short of competitors. Also, learning to fly is an arduous and sometimes pretty unrewarding experience.

If you enjoyed the original MiG-29, there's certainly enough here to make the sequel a worthwhile purchase. MiG-29 is hard to fault as a genuine flight sim, but there's not really much here for mainstream gamers.