This post will serve as a bit of a review of the singleplayer version of the Minutes to midnight campaign for the EF-24G, but also as a warning to players, and as critique to the mission designer.

TLDR: Play mission 1,3,5, give the others a try or skip them altogether.

I'll begin with saying that I love the EF-24G, but the campaign that comes with it I have very mixed thoughts of.

I don't remember the names of the missions so I'll just call them by number.

Mission 1
Things are off to a good start! This was actually a very good mission, it is a good demonstration of the new gameplay that the EF-24G offers and the mission itself plays out like a puzzle where you have to find out the best way to approach and use your weapons and equipment. Sadly the rest of the campaign does not live up to the expectations set here.

Mission 2
This is one that I'm sure many have struggled with and given up on. There is simply too little time to get setup, and everything is very overwhelming. If you want to ruin a players confidence in their abilities then this mission will do that. You have to join up with the formation and then analyze which threats to jam. And at this point you probably don't even fully know what you're doing with the jamming pods so it is pure trial and error. One improvement could be to reduce the amount of radars and then gradually increase the amount as the mission goes on. Could also be nice to take off and then fly out to the formation which then triggers them starting their approach. Along with some hints on how to use your jammers either in the briefing or along the way with voiceovers that could serve as a small tutorial as well. Overall I feel like the idea is not bad though.

Mission 3
Not too bad of a mission, very quick though. Avoid the radars and shoot down the AWACS.

Mission 4
This mission has the potential to actually be a lot of fun. Jam the enemy fighters to support your own fighters, then perform SEAD. What completely kills it is having to rely on the AI to cover you from what is FAR too many (Possibly infinite?) enemy fighters. The more radars you destroy the further away from friendlies you'll be (50+nm). And the longer you take the more fighters will be sent after you, eventually your backup is shot down or they have to RTB. At this point you either fire off all your HARM's or jettison them before going back home on full afterburner, hoping that you can DRFM their missiles as they chase you down(provided you still have the fuel to fly 50+nm on afterburners), then if you're lucky a new fighter wing has taken off, if not then you have to hope that the medium range SAM's at home base will be enough. (For some reason they even shot at me though I was jamming away from them.) If you survive, then by the time you are rearmed and ready, another wing of enemy fighters will have launched. Most of the mission is just flying to and from the mission area, jamming fighters to help your AI, hoping that they can handle the enemy. Or else it all starts over again going back to base. And all it takes is a single mistake and you lose an hour or more of progress.
So how could this mission be improved? In my opinion, keep the SEAD stuff and make only two flights of two fighters come after you, after that the scope remains clear. That way the gameplay of covering your friendlies remains and there is far less luck involved as time goes on. The enemy fighters just add SO much unecessary padding.

Mission 5
Take off quickly and shoot down two bombers. That's it. Not bad at all actually and more of what I would expect of a campaign. Maybe make it a bit longer by adding another couple of bombers along the way? Since you're just flying a long distance for less than a minute of action.

Mission 6
I finally gave up on this one, I gave it a few tries, but at this point it is not worth the time investment to experiment with different strategies after two terrible missions. I'm not saying it is impossible but your strike force have to destroy I think 12 missile silos before they launch nukes, guarded by several MAD-4's, 4 missile cruisers and several fighters. I tried taking down all the radars but didn't have enough jamming capacity so missiles were intercepted or I was shot down, then I equipped all 4 jammers and now I can only take out 6 of the I think around 8 radars. So by the time the last few missiles hit, then the friendly AI strikers had already been taken down.
This mission suffers from the problems of both mission 2 and 4 where you have a very short time window to prepare the area for your allied NPC's, then you have to rely on the AI to survive long enough to do its job. Provided none of your HARM's were intercepted.

How can this mission be fixed? I feel like the main culprit is that the AI for friendly SEAD planes is bugged, as in both mission 4 & 6 the AI will fly within GBU range before they dive down and fire their HARM, usually getting shot down before firing, or firing one before being shot down themselves. Spacing out the various stages of the operation could also make it more interesting, starting with jamming out enemy radars and fighters before then quickly carrying out SEAD against the enemy air defences, either destroying or jamming them hard enough for your strikers to get their payload on target.


So as you can see there is a bit of a pattern here, the diffculty pacing is all over the place and the good missions were the ones where the player is in full control and you don't have to rely on the AI. The missions I didn't enjoy were the ones where there are way too many things that have to click together. So you are relying a fair bit on chance. (Not to speak of the usual luck/skill involving your weapons being intercepted, you getting shot down and such. But that I can accept as it is part of the game.)

Now I know this campaign is probably meant to be played in coop with a player in the backseat, and perhaps that would some things a bit better as they can switch jamming targets and multitask in general more effectively.