Wings Of Honour

Stick Goes forward; houses get bigger - stick goes back; houses get smaller. That, dear reader, is Wings of Honour summed up in 12 words. And it's about as exciting as it gets: as a WWI flight sim, Wings Of Honour falls down on almost every level.

With its stunningly average graphics, mid-range sound effects and a physics flight model that would have Isaac Newton spinning in his grave, there isn't a whole lot going for this game. Now, this wouldn't be the end of the world if it actually had some of the basic essentials needed for a flight sim - not least of which would be the ability to look left and right as well as behind you (the so-called six-view).

If the cramped viewing isn't enough to drive you to frustration, then the game's setup will push you over the edge. Rather than having a simple keyboard/joystick/mouse option, you have to manually input every joystick function (up, down, left right etc). Surely it wouldn't have taken too much effort to have put this option in, would it?

As for the game itself, it's a throwback to an earlier age: an age when people would pay for a basic arcade shooter and be happy with their lot. But this is 2003 not 1996, and a substandard game like this isn't going to have a hope in hell of shifting more than a few hundred copies off the shelves.

There's still a big gap in the market for a shit-hot WWI flight sim, with nice-looking aircraft, a choice of flight modes and some real gameplay. Wings Of Honour just isn't it.