A really good flight simulation, which, except for a few bugs, is very realistic. It's most fun though with the additional pack which offers the possibility to create own squadrons, and to appoint the goals and the weapons.
A Squadron consists of a maximum of 16 planes and, given good tactics, can without problems destroy an enemy's base. The 16 planes have to consist of 4 groups of 4 planes. The groups are: convoy against enemy planes, planes against SAM, and 1st and 2nd squadron to attack.
Every target should be attacked by at least 2 planes to assure that it is being destroyed. There isn't a whole lot to say about the bugs, but the most important one (and actually the most useful as well) is probably that you can fly a large distance without losing a whole lot of fuel by just skipping a certain period of time, which gets you the distance you would have gotten in that time, without losing any fuel. Another thing is that you might want to get a joystick to enjoy the game fully, without joystick it probably would be quiet hard to beat the missions.
The buttons and gauges in the cockpit are "interactive", you are able to choose, and change them
by clicking on them. Unfortunately it's easy to get lost in the mess of gauges, especially for beginners. Graphics and sound are OK, and the game creates a good atmosphere, it feels like you're really "in it". Multiplayer is probably most fun, dogfight with other players is just a blast.
Unfortunately, which is the case for almost every simulator game, the plans move so much slower than they do in reality, which takes away from the game's "reality value", but is probably supposed to make the game easier for beginners. Still I think that DID could have eliminated that problem by adding a regulator for that to make it possible for ambitious players to play the game closer to the real conditions. The game is a pure fighting simulation and you don't have to have played simulators a whole lot to be good at the game.
But all in all I like the overall closeness of the game to reality even though the graphics aren't really impressive, the 3D Patch helps out a little bit, and would recommend the game, especially for simulator fans.
