Great single player, graphics and sound, but poor multiplayer.
Story: The game is set in a fictional universe with a war between two countries, Emmeria and Estovakia. You follow a unnamed pilot on the Emmerian side of the conflict though 15 varied missions. During the missions you will earn money that you can spend on new planes, better weapons or alternate colour schemes. The story in itself is quite weak, but it sets up some nice missions, which on the whole are quite good. Most missions also give you a choice on which operations to take, opening up multiple paths to completing the level. This means they have quite good replayability, which is good if you want to collect some of the achievements, as they can require multiple playthroughs. The computer controlled opponents are often very easy and passive, so most players will easily be able to survive against multiple opponents, even on higher difficulties. You will also have control of a computer controlled wingman who can be ordered to target enemies of your choice, and the ability to call for allied support when you helped enough of your allies too.
Gameplay: The actually feel of the planes are all different, but they are all very forgiving, so if you've every played a flying game before you should be fine. As mentioned before all have a huge amount of ammo, which helps to keep the game going at a decent pace. As well as these missiles you also have specials which you select before you fly which have a variety of effects, such as long range missiles for air-to-air, anti ship missiles or bombs. Not every plane has access to each special so there is an element of strategy. Sadly one place where the game could be better is the availability of more aircraft (Only 15) which would make it a lot better.
Graphics: I barely need to say much about this as they all look amazing, from the planes themselves to the smoke trails from the missiles. Amazingly there doesn't seem to be a drop in framerates even when there are 40+ planes in the sky.
Sound: The music for this game is quite good and adds a really nice touch to the game. The explosions and gunfire are all good and all, plus the voice acting in the game is actually isn't to bad either and adds to the game nicely.
Online multiplayer: This is where the game falls a little short. Often the teams can be very unbalanced and it can be very hard to find games. Also there are no ranking system or playlists and the online leaderboard is broken, which make the experience feel very incomplete.
Overall: This game is definitely a good game with a few flaws. The online play lets it down a lot and a few more aircraft would have been appreciated, though the graphics are great and the sound is nice. Quite fun to play too.
8.5/10