I so wanted a good arcade flying game for a long time. Spoiler: This won't do. At least not for me.

I'm a fucking fool. That's actually the harshest on the level of foolery. But they did only fool me once, so the shame is on them.  So what is all this foolery about? That I didn't look at the damn steam reviews before buying the game. Had I done so I'd have known that this pos doesn't support joysticks. Imagine that, a flying game on PC that doesn't support a flight controller!

That is something so far beyond reason that I'd never in my worst nightmares could've imagined it. What's next? An FPS on PC that is only playable with an XBOX controller?

I've tried playing with a controller, tried and failed. It's absolutely unplayable to me. I have an innate disability when it comes to playing any game with a boomerang shaped contraption they like to call a controller. I always thought that was only sarcasm because I'm sure as hell can't control a damn thing with it.

Playing with keyboard is out of the question as well, because you have to yaw and pitch with the mouse, that's not happening. The times of lifting the mouse at the end of the mat and resetting it at the other end a hundred million times a minute are over for me. I left them behind when I purchased my first joystick in 1994 for Tie Fighter.

Either way it is absolutely unacceptable by any standards that a game on PC would not support the re-assignment of controls to any custom input. There is no defending that, and I know some people tried. It literally takes just a few hours of coding to implement a menu where you can re-bind controls. Hell I'm 100% sure that UE comes with one already in it. This reeks laziness, and amateur hour. Which is further compounded by the fact that the game also lacks ultrawide monitor support.

Too bad because the gameplay looks fun, were I able to control it I might even actually enjoy it. But as it stands I gave up after just finishing (barely) three missions. Then started waiting on a patch for the controls. But that never happened, and so my patience ran out. I'm reviewing the game as is.

The game also looks beautiful which, is just rubbing sand in the wound as I cannot play it properly. Of course flying games were always an agreeable theme in terms of graphics. Meaning you can make them look almost photo realistic quite easily due to the fact that you're miles away from any object except your own plane. Even Flight Unlimited from 1995 looked brilliant by using actual aerial photographs as ground textures.

Even though I've not finished the game I want to say some words about the story. Well either I'm going crazy or this is the most incomprehensible random garbage I've ever seen. The cutscenes between missions seem to have absolutely no relation to the actual missions you're flying. Like they're from a different game altogether. And the briefings / chatter during missions is also completely incomprehensible to me. I'm sitting there not understanding the context at all.

+

  • Graphics
  • Gameplay

-

  • No support for USB game controllers except for gamepads.
  • No way to re-assing any of the inputs
  • Incomprehensible story

The verdict:

graphics/realization: 9/10
story/atmosphere: 2/10
gameplay/controls: 0/10
overall impression: 0/10

In its current state the game is unplayable to me, hence the zero score. And since they don't seem intent on adding support for additional controllers, that's where it'll stay.  But one thing is sure as hell, they aren't getting a dime out of me ever again. The humiliation I suffered at their hands is unbearable. I purchased the game, installed it, dusted down my trusty Logitech Extreme 3D, set it up neatly on my desk expecting to have a fun time, only for the game to completely ignore it.