Microsoft take us back to the theatre of their very first Combat Flight Simulator, but this time we begin late in the war when England and America begin the push to re-invade Europe. There is also a change in philosophy of focusing on the ground war by virtue of the planes flyable this time around with planes like the infamous Mosquito, the P47 Thunderbolt, and British Typhoon. Also flyable are the B25 and B26 medium bombers from America and Germany's JU-88s. They also allow us to explore what might have happened had the war continued, by including several aircraft that never quite made it into the war (but may have had quite an impact) such as the Dornier Do 335A-1 and B-2 "Pfeil" ("Arrow") from Germany, and the P-80A Shooting Star and fantastical P-55 Ascender, or Britain's de Havilland Vampire.

All up 18 different aircraft with 34 different variants are available to the player, but unlike previous versions there are no other non-flyable aircraft. The exclusion of the seemingly obvious B-17 Flying Fortress means that the strategic bombing war doesn't really feature this time around. Despite this, the selection of aircraft is good and varied, and should please almost anyone.

Out of the box, CFS3 comes with a fold out map and key chart, a 33 page guide, and 2 CD's. As usual, the presentation taken here is excellent, with the key chart and guide having the appearance of old brown paper and typewriter text. There are 3 handbooks covering Basic Flight, the Machines of War and Understanding the Tactical Air War as PDF files that share this presentation, and it's a real pity they weren't provided in print form. A full install will tax your hard drive about 1.5 gig, but before you do install the game, we give you this strong word of warning. Have your computer in order, and your drivers up to date. CFS3 is a resource hog, there has been plenty of discussion about performance issues and it will eat up your system resources faster than Jamie Oliver on a cooking frenzy. That's all we will say about that here, if you need help, visit the Simulations Forum.

The installation itself is fairly painless, but once you are ready to go, be sure to run the standalone CFSConfig utility to alter your graphic settings. In game is a brand new story for anyone used to the Flight Simulator series. A brand new engine has meant a completely redesigned interface. While it may take a little getting used to, and may not be as intuitive as it might have been, it does the job adequately. Instead of a static main screen, you get to see your pilot shuffling around in front of the plane you have currently selected to fly. You have a number of sound and graphical options, and also the realism options where you can choose the level of flight model, weapon effectiveness and such.

The 4 modes of game play are, Quick Combat, Single Missions, Campaign and Multiplayer.

Quick Combat gives you a large number of choices when creating a mission, and will let you fly that mission anywhere in the CFS3 world, at any time in any weather. Where it does have limitations is in the number of friendly and enemy AI aircraft in flight with you, so you won't be able to set up huge aerial battles this way. Single Missions are self explanatory, and include some "What If" missions, pitting the jet aircraft against each other. These types of games will be familiar with CFS veterans, but the campaign is something entirely new.

This time around, a single dynamic campaign has been created, with role-playing and to a lesser degree team management elements included. Although there is only one campaign, you can tackle it from either a bomber or fighter pilots perspective for any of the 3 nations involved, making for six possible variants of the campaign. You start by creating a pilot with their own attributes and weaknesses, and are able to assign a set number of points to a mixture of their vision, g-tolerance and health levels. During the course of the campaign you can earn points to enable you to increase these attributes, and their values can also fall. You also have a certain number of prestige points, which rise and fall with your victories or failures, and you can use your prestige to restore your health, or trade them for new planes as they become available.

Central to the campaign structure is the theatre map, where information about the war is displayed, including the frontline, and allows you to select your next mission. Be wary of the default mission you are assigned though. A number of times we were tasked to fly further than our fuel would allow for a safe return. Missions vary depending on the grid you select, and your role as a pilot, but fighter pilots are given a fair amount of ground pounding work to do as well as all the cloud based glamour stuff, so there's enough variety to keep you interested. The campaign does really follow historical guidelines though, as its not uncommon to see things like German battleships attacking the British mainland from the English Channel which never occurred during WW2. Missions also vary, so if you are killed and decide to replay a mission, you may not be faced with the same opposition, or find the same target.

Damage done to objects during a mission doesn't seem to carry across missions, instead just affecting the level of enemy strength both in the grid you are battling in, and the enemy's overall resources. Likewise with the aircraft in your flight, it doesn't seem to make a difference to the next mission if your entire flight is wiped out, except to replace experienced pilots with nuggets. Most of the areas of the campaign are very well done, and its awesome to see a ground war occurring underneath you, however certain aspects of the game don't do the campaign justice at all.