Echelon: Wind Warriors

If You're a flight sim purist, it's time to cover your eyes because Echelon: Wind Warriors (the follow-up to 2001 's Echelon) is pure arcade. Flying a variety of futuristic craft, you have to blow away the opposition using missiles, cannon and machine guns, while avoiding the seemingly never-ending barrage of flack heading in your direction.

The flight model is a mix of the logicdefying and the convincing. Turning your engines off enables you to levitate, but the yaw and pitch take some getting used to. However, these novel touches do add a modicum of originality to the game.

Graphically, Echelon is looking fairly dated, but it's nice to see you have plenty of control over the customisation of your craft. And while the Al is challenging, it does tend to be a little on the suicidal side, displaying absolutely no regard for its own life with its incessant attacks. Still, what do you expect from an arcade shooter? To its credit, though, Echelon does boast some truly vast maps, along with some very convincing weather conditions to boot.

Dated, but addictive, Echelon is a fun blast for owners of older PCs. If you're a hardcore flight fan, give it a miss, but for 20 quid, you could do a lot worse.