Combat Flight Simulator 3: Excellent for Veterans, Lacking for Rookies

I recently got into combat flight simulation games when I downloaded the free "retired" Fighter Ace from Jaleco Entertainment, which featured extensive controls and a wide variety of airplanes from torpedo bombers to jet fighters like the Me262. But because single player is extremely limited in Fighter Ace (you have no wingmen, and your enemies respawn, so that instead of destroying a cargo ship, you have to destroy an infinite number), I purchased CFS 3: Battle for Europe.

CFS 3 has excellent graphics and realistic gameplay. Although it omits some of the better known and more utilized planes like the Hurricane in favor of four jet fighters (Vampire, Shooting Star, Me262, Gotha-222), the planes are astonishly realistic, and as you strafe ground troops, you really get a feeling like you are a WWII Mustang pilot.

Unfortunately, CFS 3 has many cons. It has multiple graphics issues, which are only fixed by an update on their site, CFS 3.1. Further, it has too many complications in some cases (for example, if the auto-engine start fails, a beginner has to manually start the engine, a tedious and complicated process). The training is lacking, consisting of two 100 page manuals Flight School,and Machines of War. The first details combat maneuvers and tricks. The second is plane and vehicle recognition charts and stats. This is hard to read on the computer, and way too much paper and ink when printed.

The training movies are difficult to find. Although they are supposed to be online, they are actually found by searching "Training Movies" in Help.

The system requirements are extremely draconian. The game lags, especially when firing. I would reccommend at least 512 MB of RAM, although the minimum is 256MB.

The training missions are hard and give no instruction whatsoever, and this can be very frustrating.

I highly reccommend buying a joystick for this game- preferably one with lots of buttons. Mine has 12, and I still find myself using complicated keyboard commands often.

All in all, a great game with many fixes needed. I would reccomend to beginning fight sim players to download Fighter Ace from Download.com and use its training missions to learn basic flight and basic manevers, and then to read Flight School and Machines of War (its OK to skip around), and watch the training movies. then, use Free Flight in CFS 3 to practice more complicated maneuvers.