To be honest with you, where Flight sims are concerned Ace combat reigns supreme, nothing, not Over G fighters, not Slipstream not even Top Gun (the game) came close. But I have to say that although, due to these dissapointements, I was initially pessimistic that this would contend after getting half way in I suppected that it could. The problem is that towards the end of the game the missions got really boring and so I lost respect for it. Released in 2009 by Ubisoft (the same develppers behind the assassins creed franchise)

Synopsis: You play David Crenshaw a wing leader (3 planes) in the Air forces HAWX 'ace' squadron when you and your two wingmen all decide to retire from years of government flying (you do a little border jumper over to mexico to help a GHOST Recon team, after which you go to work in the private sector for a company called Artemis, one of the world sleading privatised military forces which can be bought for the right price. Upon joining you prove yourself in an African and Brazilian campaigns, flying over Rio. Apart from some differences of opion by your commander , things are going well and you are even given more responcibility and a bonus by Artemis` CEO Adrian Dewinter. However you fly a mission protecting a US carrier group, which when completed, the Artemis carrier group appear and start an attack on US group, having switched sides because a south american faction paid them more. Having none of these mercenary ways, crenshaws crew go all patriotic and refuse to fire upon the americans and instead protect them. So now your back on uncle sams buck fighting against the might of Artemis, who having acquired some nukes, threaten to let off some fireworks on US soil and threaten the country with total invasion. Gradually you take back the US and foloow Artemis back to their mountenous base where you wipe out the last remnants.

Gameplay and Graphics:
Generally the aircraft (of which there are 50 to choose from) are fairly easy to control and are very much similar to that of Ace combat in terms of thrust and air brakes, barrel roll etc. The primary and secondary weapons handling can take some getting used to, but I ofund once Id got it, I thouhgt the weapons inventory switching easier then ace combat. The graphics are great. Satallites were used to map the cities and the planes are rendered picture perfect. Only the characters look like mannequins !
ERS:
But the main differences are two fold , first there is the ERS system, once in range you can switch this on which gives you atriabngular path to the target or through SAM (missle) heavy sites, as long as you stay within the traingulation you will be fine. Obvoiusly the ERS gets hard to turn within and faster as you progress , the secret is not to panic if a couple of bullets stray past you. I think its a nice otuch though.
Unstable Flight:
The second thing is the 'Assistance off', by far my favouriate feature of ANY FLIGHT SIM ...being tom clancy he likes to go into technical detail, but it breaks down like this...most aircraft (generation 4 onwards) are built actually unstable in flight, an onboard avionics PCU keep them stable, the way you oculd theoretically perform outragous air combat moves, would be to switch it off. Russian pilots demonstrate this in the SU 37 ' Striking Cobra' flips - look it up on you tube and the Eurofighters fantatsic turning stats are down to partial assistance off and the use of canades at the front, so this game is reall realistic. The only trouble is that you can use it on older planes where unstable flight is not a reality...but hey who cares right ! it a game. With the assistance off, your pilot view will flip to a 3rd person, 70 degree view, slightly back and of to the side ! it allows you to see enemies within a tight truning cuircles and lock on, fire and destroy. It also allows you to flip over incoming missles that are right up your jacksy....a thoroughly satisfying feeling. But dont get too cocky, if you lose airspeed, you stall, and trust me trying to initiate a re-burn mid air when youve got bogeys all around you is no fun.
The missle cam is a nice feature too. On Fire and forget missles, just hold the button down and watch the missel all the way to the target. You are still flying in this time though so keep an eye on where you going !

Aircraft and weapons
50 aircraft to choose from from the cold war MIG Fishbed, A-10 Thnuderbolt to the SU 37 Terminator and the new Joint Strike Fighter, all perfectly rendered. More weapons packages then you can shake a stick at from multi air to air missles, to rockets and bombs.

Missions
Unfortunely this is where the game falls down, they are monotonous, some of the escort (president mission) can be ruddy difficult, and the last mission are all air to ground attack. The last canyon mission is so boring I ate my own hand to keep myelf awake....they obviously stole this from Ace Combat and didnt copy it half as well as they should have !