Secret Weapons Over Normandy is a combination of flight simulator and historical recreation of WW2. I had high hopes for this game, but it seems a bit outdated.

You start out with some simple target practice - balloons, bombers and barrels. Soon you're moving against a variety of targets in the air, land and sea. There are 30 missions in all, plus the option for multiplayer combat.

I've always been a huge fan of flight simulators and space combat simulators. So I was all ready for this fresh release to have great graphics and gameplay. I just wasn't impressed at all in either case. Yes, I suppose if you compare the graphics against the early flight simulators, it's amazing how far we've come. The plane has the details of the flaps and wing segments, the landscape has trees and roads. The radar display sweeps around. But nothing is up to the standards of current day productions.

The same is true for the planes themselves, how they fly and how the AI flies against you. Your plane's controls are extremely simplistic. Yes, you stall if you fly straight up, as you would expect to! And yes if you plow head-first into a structure you crash. But there are many other cases where the game plays more like an arcade version set on "very easy" than a modern day WW2 combat game.

This might be a good game for someone who has never played flight simulators before and who wants a very simple entry into that area before dealing with something more complex. But any advanced gamer, or a gamer who has played any style of airplane / spacecraft flying game, will want to rent this one first to see how they personally enjoy what it offers.

Buy Secret Weapons Over Normandy from Amazon.com