Fighter Squadron: Screaming Demons over Europe is one of those "might have been great" sims. From the screenshot above, this seems like the game that we've been waiting for - the chance to pilot heavy bombers. Not only that, you can man the gunner stations and fly fighters too!

The initial release of Fighter Squadron was terrible - the flight model largely avoided worrying about drag, meaning that coming in to land was interesting, to say the least. You could turn off the engines several miles out and even the slightest incline in your approach path meant that you would still be going too fast over the runway threshold.

Version 1.5 has bought a few improvements - not least a halfway decent flight model. It has updated the game to release status. Nevertheless ...

The game has so many good points that it's difficult to see how it became such a disaster. The highlights of the game are:

Flying the B-17, Lancaster, Mosquito, Ju-88
Manning gunner stations in the bombers
Good Aircraft & Airbase graphics, including ability to use completely new skins
Open Plane format allows the creation of new objects

The low points are:

Lack of Messerschmidt Bf-109
Parallel Universe maps (no London!)
Terrible missions (largest has 11 planes)
No proper campaigns
Awful autozoom padlock view system - seems like a good idea, useless in practice
Bad plane instruments - need to use ahistorical "HUD"

The autozoom padlock was a brave attempt at trying something new. The idea was that a pilot looking at a plane off his wing is looking at a large expanse of sky, whereas the pilot looking at a plane through his gunsight is concentrating just on his target. The view therefore zooms in. In practice this doesn't work. Not only are you far too zoomed in when looking at the target, the constant zooming is disorientating and it is difficult to calculate lead or get a sense of scale without a fixed reference.

Some players have also complained that in a fighter-fighter turning dogfight the firing aircraft cannot see the target when firing a lead shot. This is actually realistic. When pulling lead on a turning target it was not unusual for the target to be obscured by your aircraft's nose. Accouts from the time make this clear.

The game experience itself completely lacks the ability to absorb and interest. If it weren't for the ability to fly the Lancaster low over the water while humming the Dambuster tune it would be even worse.

As it is I reinstalled the game only for the review. Having tested and played it I still feel the same. The game has been uninstalled already.