We do! And so probably does everyone else who anticipated the chance to see MOH's lavish authenticity and gritty handling of the war theme applied to a flying game. All the promise was there, the first screenshots were circulating and flight game fans (especially those starved of decent air combat on game consoles) were starting to feel the first pangs of desire for such a title but then... EA pulled the plug. Agghhh! That news went down like a lead balloon around here after we'd been following news and reading the odd interview with the game's developers. However, as it so happens all was not completely lost because it appears that all the groundwork done by the original (ex-) DreamWorks team ended up forming the basis for the new LucasArts WWII flight combat title, Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

Secret Weapons indeed has all the hallmarks of a game that would sit nicely within the MOH stable. Its presentation and interface are quite similar with newsreels of WWII footage playing as a narrator keeps you abreast of events and a hand-written diary and typed notebooks recording mission details. The brilliantly rousing orchestral soundtrack is also so similar in style that you'd swear blind it was yet another MOH sequel firing up if you walked out of the room after hitting the reset button. Not surprising to find out then that MOH score composer Michael Giacchino also did the business here!

Anyway enough of the comparisons because Secret Weapons is a fantastic WWII game in its own right. It also has a pretty good pedigree in that developers Totally Games have already released several decent flight games for PC, one of which, Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe, is held up as a forerunner for this latest title. However, let's establish this right now before the simheads start bombing us - Secret Weapons Over Normandy IS NOT a flight sim. In fact it plays very differently to SWOTL so any flight sim purists reading this may wish to stop now and go back to their joysticks.

A clue to its true nature may lay in the fact that Creative Director Larry Holland was also responsible for the hugely successful X-Wing and TIE Fighter Stars Wars space combat games. What you get as a result then is a console flight combat title with all the gritty WWII authenticity and content of the aforementioned MOH series and earlier flight sims combined with a more functionally fun arcade-style control system and gameplay. That's not to say it's strictly an arcade game per se either though as the degree of realism in the environments, the planes and most of the content including all the unlockable extras is very high and believable. It actually plays out more like a war movie a lot of the time with it's high degree of action, lightly scripted scenarios, gorgeous 3D world and a rich dynamic soundtrack.

Throughout the whole game you play an American pilot named James Chase, who was assigned to the British Royal Air Force in 1940. After proving yourself early on you're enlisted by a secret outfit known as the Blackhawks who, because of their elite status, are assigned some of the toughest and more covert missions in the war. At first you're based in Europe and take on missions such as halting Rommel's advances into Africa but after the invasion at Pearl Harbour you're moved to the Pacific to take on the Japanese for a short while. After that the fun really starts as you're moved back to Europe to help out when Germany's potentially devastating secret weapons programme is uncovered.

At the very start of the game you only have one plane in your hangar available to use for the first mission - the trusty Hawker Hurricane. As you progress though other planes become available usually related to the mission you've just completed or are about to take on. Before long you'll have a whole fleet of different aircraft to choose from and in many of the missions you can choose whatever plane you want. However, because every mission is different you'll need to make wise choices in plane and weapon selection but for at least part of the game it's fairly obvious what your choice needs to be. There's also a handy help option while in the hangar that will have the mechanic giving you advice on the various planes for the missions they are about to take on.

Totally Games have obviously gathered a wealth of research and knowledge about the planes as they're all historically correct and brilliantly recreated plus there's unlockable videos revealing further background knowledge information on many of them. Some of the planes you'll be flying include the Mark V Spitfire, Fairey Swordfish torpedo plane, Lockheed P-38F Lightning, de Havilland Mosquito, F4F Wildcat, P-51D Mustang and captured planes such as the Messerschmitt Bf-109, Focke Wulf FW-190 and Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero or "Zeke". There are plenty of others including many experimental and secret planes that are unlocked during the game such as the very first operational German jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me-262 A-1a. However, unlocking a new plane just about every mission means that you really only get a brief blast in some of the earlier ones. Who wants to fly a relatively slow prop model though when you can zip around in your shiny new jet-powered aircraft and outrun just about everyone else?!

The handling of all these planes is markedly and quite distinctly different and this can actually have quite an effect on how you approach things. For instance, while on a mission to torpedo U-Boats in your Fairey Swordfish biplane the last thing you need is a few fast Bf-109 fighter planes tearing you to shreds! Therefore using tactics to avoid alerting them is imperative. Each plane you've obtained can be viewed in your hangar before taking on each mission and all their performance ratings are displayed. While here you can also make upgrades to the armour, engine, airframe and weapon capacity if you've been awarded Upgrade Requisitions in prior missions. This then becomes a reason to do well and obtain as many mission objectives as possible and requires just a small amount of management to make best use of any upgrades you have.

The 30 or so missions (15 main ones and about the same number of "challenge" missions) are quite varied and as already mentioned range across various global locations. You'll be doing anything from providing air support for ground troops or escaping comrades to torpedoing enemy ships and U-Boats and bombing buildings and other targets. All the while waves of enemy fighters and bombers will try and slow your progress or take out your allies in the air or on the ground. Therefore as well as a fair bit of air-to-ground action there's truckloads of air-to-air dogfighting and bomber interception in Secret Weapons as you'd expect. It's strictly good old-fashioned down and dirty line-'em-up and shoot-'em-down WWII machine gun action with the odd rocket thrown in for good measure.

And that brings us to the all-important topic of discussion when talking flight games - controls. Keeping in mind that Secret Weapons was never aimed at being a strict flight sim anyway it's still inevitable that you're never going to please everyone with controls in this genre no matter what you do. Luckily then Totally Games have gone to great lengths to cover as many bases as possible within the scope of their approach with this game and we applaud their efforts. There are 4 main controller setups with 3 standard ones aimed at novice and intermediate pilots plus an advanced one representing more traditional flight controls. The main difference is that while the advanced setup has separate rudder controls mapped to the right analogue stick for more precise quick turns and rolls, the default standard setup has all your pitch, roll and yaw movements controlled by the left analogue stick only.

Overall the standard controls are simple and intuitive and most actions performed in the game only require a single button press. Other default controls are - right analogue stick for throttle, R3 (pressed in) for looking behind you, R1 for firing primary weapon, R2 for secondary weapon, L1 for zoom camera, L2 for target lock (finding out where enemies are), triangle for toggling camera view, circle for "reflex time" (see below), square for targeting ground targets, X for targeting air targets, d-pad down for lowering/raising landing gear, Start for pausing/in-game menu and Select for instant replay mode. The d-pad left, up and right buttons are for giving the 3 orders "attack my target", "target at will" and "defend me" to wingmen. These work well in most scenarios and usually illicit a nice radioed response from your comrades.

As in some other PC flight games Secret Weapons employs the use of what they call "reflex time" during combat. Essentially this alters the speed of the game during play. Pressing the circle button once slows time down and allows you to line up targets a little more accurately during dogfights. It's at first a strange sensation and at worst seems almost like cheating but it can really help you get past sticky situations in missions where the odds seem stacked against you. Pressing and holding the circle button has the opposite effect and speeds up time allowing you move more quickly between hotspots on the maps. It's probably not something you'll use a lot throughout the game but it does tend to add another little fun element to gameplay. Another more arcadey feature is the lead crosshair which appears when a target is in range and allows you to line up and shoot ahead of moving craft so that ordinance hits the target dead-on. There's still a degree of skill required so don't think for a minute it makes things too easy.

This brings us to AI in the game. It's good! A brief general statement yes, but just about every move you make will be met with a response from a threatened enemy and during large and heated dogfights enemy fighters can provide a decent challenge as they do everything to dodge your fire and manoeuvre to get behind you for a kill. Sure there's a few slightly less evasive opponents out there who you'll dispatch fairly quickly but overall the feeling again is quite believable while still allowing you a good kill ratio after just a little practice.

Besides the main single-player Campaign mode there's also Instant Action and the Multiplayer games. Instant Action single-player games allow you to play one-off single games against the enemy in a controlled environment where you can set options such as the score limit, time limit and the map to be played (15 can be unlocked). You can also choose your plane type, secondary weapon, wing mates (up to 5), number of enemies (up to 6), skill level, camouflage style and upgrades.

There are 2 types of Multiplayer games. 2-player Versus Instant Action is exactly like the single-player game except that each player gets to set up separate options for their teams. Two-player Challenge Missions can be played either co-operatively against enemies or competitively for head-to-head combat. Each pilot here is charged with performing specific tasks in the challenge to attain victory. Multiplayer modes are played via a horizontal splitscreen and we suggest at least a 29" TV to get the best out of things as you need as much good vision as possible to keep track of the action in this game. Sadly though there is no online play.

Visually Secret Weapons is really impressive. Not in a cutting edge kind of way but more by the fact that everything just looks the part from the spot-on recreation of the whole believable WWII theme throughout to the large expanse of the detailed maps with their great draw distance. Everything moves very believably, especially all the aircraft and while the combination of huge maps and intense combat action can slow the framerate a bit there's never any painful slowdown and smooth gameplay is pretty constant throughout. Totally Games appear to have struck a perfect balance between making this game look really good and play really well at the same time. Minor tradeoffs like the slightly lower framerate and some slightly blocky-looking models to keep polygon counts reasonable are totally forgivable given the scale of everything achieved and the PS2's processing power.

Nice visual touches in Secret Weapons include moving wing flaps and rudders which react well to your controller movements, nice tracer and contrail (wingtip trail) effects and great explosions and damage modelling. Damage in particular looks and even sounds great with bits flying off and flame and smoke getting more intense as an increasing number of hits are taken. Seeing your enemies flying through the air with fire engulfing them is quite satisfying especially when you know that one or two more connected shots will finish them off. Another nice little feature is seeing pilots parachuting straight after their plane has been destroyed as it keeps things a little more humane as you know they'll be back to fight another day.

In WWII games where authenticity is all important to create the perfect atmosphere, sound can definitely be the make or break feature. Secret Weapons succeeds here though to a high degree. Firstly the score, as mentioned earlier, is produced by experienced war game composer Michael Giacchino who also created music for the Medal Of Honor games and that other recent WWII blockbuster, Call Of Duty. The soundtrack is totally in tune with the theme and along with the style of the game's interface allows it to sit nicely alongside and compliment other current WWII action titles.

Perhaps more impressive though is the absolutely massive effort that Totally Games went to create realistic sound effects for Secret Weapons. As is revealed by movie footage in the game itself staff went to great lengths and hunted down actual surviving and still operable models of many of the planes in the game. They then recorded every sound made by their running engines and moving parts for insertion into the game. This adds an unparalleled quality and realism that impresses just that bit more when you actually see them doing the sound recording in the film footage.

There's also some decent voice acting that gets the job done pretty well with German and Japanese dialects being spoken by respective opponents again for authenticity as well as some accented English taunts from enemies aimed your way. The constant radio chatter is never intrusive but more so again adds believability and also tension at the right moments. Luckily all radio transmissions are also printed onscreen as often you're so wrapped up in combat that you need to glance at what's been said to catch what you just missed hearing.