First off, this review only applies to the Israel Mk2 campaign for Allied Force. In other campaigns in Allied Force, the campaign engine will generate too few barcaps for the game to be fun.
The elements of realism in a falcon4 flight simulation are artificial intelligence, cockpit graphics and instrumentation, terrain graphics,missile physics, and the dynamic campaign engine.
Falcon4 Allied Force excels over bms4 in two things. These are the artificial intelligence in certain things in air to air combat, and the dynamic campaign engine. In Allied Force, enemy aircraft are better at firing follow-up missiles. In bms4 enemy aircraft only fire one missile for SARH missiles (R23R and R23ER missiles) and then quit allowing you to close the distance. For ARH missiles(R77), however, the agressiveness is the same in both versions of Falcon. In the dynamic campaign engine, Allied Force generates far more barcap missions, which would increase the air to air resistance you would encounter.
Do these two things make Allied Force more hard than bms4. Bms4 ends up being just about as hard as Allied Force. This is because there is a mod in f4patch in bms4 to make aircraft with air to ground missions seek out and destroy enemy aircraft. This means all aircraft do a fighter sweep regardless of their mission.
For the first item, firing followup SARH missile shots doesn't make too much difference. There are enough aircraft swinging behind you and aircraft approaching you from multiple directions in bms4, that the lack of followup SARH missile shots isn't much of an issue for game hardness.
For game style, I find that the speed of enemy missiles slowing down at a far faster rate in Allied Force makes it more fun than bms4 in this area. This is because ARH missiles have a chance of being avoided when seen on the radar warning display. In bms4, you have to take evasive action when the enemy is more than 15 miles away. This means that you have to stay no less than 15 miles away from enemy aircraft at all times. This is too hard.
There really is one issue for artificial intelligence that does make a difference. The enemy surface to air missile sites do a better job of turning on their radar at the last moment in Allied Force than in bms4. Surface to air missile sites are a threat to even harm carrying aircraft whereas in bms4 they are turned on too early to be a threat.
For SEAD missions, enemy SAMs turn their radar off during the launch harm and turn away from it tactic when an SA5 or SA10 is nearby. In bms4 enemy radars keep their radars on when you launch and turn away from it. This makes SEAD in Allied Force more fun.
The visual targeting of the maverick in and the targeting pod leave a lot to be desired in Falcon4 Allied Force. Not only are vehicles hard to identify, but they're hard to see even when they are used with radar. Ground attacks on vehicles are part of the game fun. Especially since missions call for destroying a certain type of vehicle such as engineering vehicles.
Therefore, Allied Force scores higher in artificial intelligence. The aircraft and surface to air missile sites are smarter. However, bms4 is not far behind. If it was Allied Force would score above bms4. Artificial intelligence is the most important thing but not the only thing. Still, artificial intelligence is mostly what good gameplay is all about. It makes up for its other deficiencies, which makes me subtract only .5 out of 10 from its score to give it a score of 8.5 out of 10.
Overall fun: 8.5/10 Very Good
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