This is not a serious air combat sim, and anyone looking for something long those lines should look at Il-2 Sturmovik or similar games. This is an arcade-style game, and an extremely fun one at that. There are four mission packs to choose from, including the ones available for free on Slitherine's site - USA, UK, USSR, and Germany. Each country has four types of planes: a fighter (ex. P-51, La-5), a strike aircraft (ex. Stuka, Mosquito), a heavy bomber (ex. B-17, Pe-2), and an experimental jet. Each mission pack has 3-4 campaigns which start at one point in the war, and progress monthly until an end date. When you start a campaign, you usually have a few missions to choose from, except at the beginning, when you mostly have training or patrol missions, and at the end, when you've already beaten everything but a few. As you complete missions, you are rewarded with extra planes (to replace any you've lost through crashing or being shot down!) or with new ones.

Missions tend to be either patrol (fly through waypoints, with the possibility of getting attacked), air superiority (shoot down enemy planes), escort bombers, or ground attack/bombing runs. The patrol missions are very repetitive and boring, but fortunately there's no need to pick them once you're a few missions into the campaign. Some of the late-war missions can be fairly challenging, and others offer a bit of variety, such as American Schweinfurt missions (bomb the factory, then run for your life!).

The aircraft are all pretty similar to others of their type, with minor differences in handling, armament, and ammo capacity. However, the difference is enough to make them play differently. The Mosquito, for example, fires six rounds at once, making it easy to destroy tanks on a strafing run. The Stuka, on the other hand, only fires two rounds, forcing you to either make several passes, or rely on rockets and bombs.

Overall, this game is very fun to play, especially when you only have an hour, or less, to set aside and play. It's well worth it for casual gamers, but air sim fans and grognards might want to look for something else.

It gets five stars during the $5 sale, and four stars at full price. With two free downloadable expansion packs from the Slitherine website, this is a nice value. For those who dislike the hardcore flight sims with 100 hotkey buttons, this is the perfect title. Good graphics, smooth play, enough content. I just wouldn't recommend it to the grognard FS addict.

Airstrike, Eagles of World War II is a reasonably fun flightsimulator - well, airplane arcade game, to be exact. Especially when playing LAN, it can turn out to be quite some fun, where you can mindlessly focus an moving and shooting or bombing your targets, without having a complete and realistic manual besides you, for flying and landing your plane. So, don't expect a real flight-simulator; it isn't that, and it doesn't advocate itself as such. In this respect, it resembles "Combat Wings: Battle of Britain Arcade Edition"; you see your plane from a 3rd party-viewpoint at the back, and you get a visor to follow when firing at enemy airplanes or targets; you just fly, aim, and fire. You can move adequately, but don't expect fliprolls or fine-tuned airmanoeuvres; they've kept it simple, as an arcade-ish game should be.

The visuals and sounds are ok; not superb and ultra-realistic like with some of the latest blockbuster-FPS and RPG's like Skyrim, but more than adequate. The same goes for the models of the planes: not ultra-realistic, so for people kicking on an exact replica of WW2 planes, it won't be exciting, but they're reasonable well done, as are the special effects and the sound. The music, however, while on itself clear enough, is a bit dull and 'weird' (in a non-technical way, I mean) though, especially when the game is loading or during intermezzos. My biggest gripe is that it takes a long time to use all models of planes; in fact, I only managed to get and use two types for the first 4-5 missions, as of yet, though I have several more plane-types 'in the hangar'; but I can't seem to actually use them immediately. Or maybe I just didn't found out how, yet. And, btw, you can find at least two expansions for free on their website, with extra planes (English, German) and missions. But there too, I cant seem to actually equip myself with one, as of yet. They should have made a tab with just 'dogfight' in it, instead of campaign and multiplayer. And a tad with co-op too. Didn't check it fully out yet, but I didn't see a campaign where you can actually play in co-op style. Maybe it's there, but I didn't find it yet, so basically; the GUI could have been better and more intuitive.

But as for the rest, it's certainly worth playing it, certainly for less than 5 bucks! That's a bargain!

Fun arcade shooter that runs on ANY machine. Do NOT expect a simulation, it is just an action packed arcade shooter. Also, be sure to download the free expansion packs from Slitherine.com. They add more than double the amount of missions to the game as well as extra planes.