Also, and much more importantly, the dogfights are particularly good. The sound is first-rate too - really thumping cannon noises and engine sounds that appear to be spot on. TheД®ight aircraft on offer all behave with subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences. But then you'd expect no less from the Flight Sim 98 people. You're Being Picky, Surely?Д¬ertainly the engine is very nice - one of the best I've experienced to date. No attempt at dynamic campaigning, not even a hint of slight randomisation.ДЄll very poor, frankly. Out of curiosity I restarted a new career in the same service and discovered that I was replaying exactly the same missions all over again. In total, my career (spanning two years) took place in just a dozen or so missions, and I died in at least half of them. However, it didn't seem to do my career any harm, as I was still able to move on to the next mission as though nothing had happened. Worse still, I got shot down, killed in my prime. No attempt at forging a realistic career was being made (unlike European Air War - reviewed on which does this very well). Suddenly I was taking off from a different airfield with a whole new bunch of wingmen. My second mission, however, didn't occur until almost two weeks later. My first mission was a simple patrol - easy enough, fairly quiet, no kills. I created a character and started with the USAF in the Battle over Europe (you can also play through the Battle of Britain for either team, incidentally). The best way to describe this is to outline a sample career of my own. There's no sense of realism on offer here. The single-player missions are also quite interesting, with some nice quirks to them: shoot a German officer's staff car from under the Eiffel Tower, or rescue a downed pilot from a German airbase, for example.Д«ut MCFS falls over in the campaigns. The training modes are pretty good, with a typically angry American officer shouting commands at you as though you're an imbecile. MCFS also suffers in that it's not very engaging in its efforts to lure you in and keep you there. And why not 'R'? Because 'R', ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is used for setting time compression. It's 'B' - for Bloody stupid key assignments, perhaps.

Which key do you suppose you have to press to activate radio communication? 'R' perhaps? Nope. Let's pluck an example at random from the key commands: radio communication. But to say MCFSis user-friendly would be like saying Jim Davidson is funny. Unlike this month's other WWII flight sim, which tries to create a real sense of being there, and practically invites you into the game with a friendly handshake and offers of casual sex, Microsoft's effort seems content to revel in the mistakes of its civil-based sibling by going all-out on the engine dynamics and then forgetting that people without a C++ Honours degree are going to have to use it.

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