I wanted to like this game but I just couldn't do it.
Well, as the old saying goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think that sadly applies to this game. I feel like they had the right idea at heart here which was to create a highly accessible, action packed WWII flight combat experience that didn't get bogged down with the complexity often associated with flight simulation games. Unfortunately, somehow they really managed to miss the mark here badly by going overboard and creating an experience so arcade oriented that it ranks as the farthest departure from a combat flight sim I have ever played and I've played plenty of them over the years since I fell in love with the genre playing BoB 1942 a long time ago.
The game is several years old now at this writing and of course the graphics looked dated. The thing is, they seem not very good to me even for three years ago. There simply is not a lot of detail in anything ranging from the ground scenery and targets to even the planes themselves. The failure to include a first person cockpit view is in my opinion, an unforgivable sin. For me, this utterly destroyed what little possible sense of immersion I might have enjoyed playing this game.
I also disliked the inclusion of a Max Payne-like slowdown feature for an air combat sim. Rather than make the encounters impossible to win without slowing the action to a crawl, it would have been far better to balance the missions such that victory is attainable with some semblance of immersion and satisfaction. For me, the experience to "slowing" the enemy to kill them, kills the experience and eliminates any sense of satisfaction in winning a mission.
The sound was good, the weapons sounded pretty good and the music and voice acting wasn't bad but it wasn't exactly stellar either. It was just OK which would not be bad if the rest of the game didn't suffer such fatal flaws in execution.
Lastly, the lack of any multi player is another sore spot here. Had this game had at least a detailed cockpit view and a decent multiplayer experience that could have gone a long way to redeeming it. As it stands however, it just falls flat on most measures according to the standards many who like these kind of games would have.
I really, really wanted to like this game but in the end I was instead very disappointed here. It could have and should have been so much better. Why they could not take the winning formula of the previous games I mentioned and render that with modern graphics and sound is beyond me. If they had done so, you would probably be reading glowing reviews of greatness here but sadly this game is nowhere near great and I cannot even call it good really. It is fair at best and if you are a combat flight sim player who loves these kind of games I think you would more likely consider this game a poor one.
If you just want an arcade style shoot-em-up experience that is easy to play and probably runs well on an older system given its lackluster visuals then you might like this game and have fun with it. If you like combat flight sims, even those that tend to have a more arcade than sim kind of feel to them, just be mindful that this one takes that to an extreme that you too may find to be as disappointing as I did.