Flying has never been so dull
It might once have been cutting edge stuff, full of thrills and spills for the early home computer user, but sadly time has not been kind to Spitfire Ace and what was once exciting now merely looks tired and worn. It's certainly ambitious stuff for its time and as you might expect it's a kind of primitive flight simulator which thrusts you into the cockpit of perhaps the best known fighter plane of all time. The game throws the would-be pilot into the drama of WWII by giving them a selection of missions to fly and which take place all across war-torn Europe and North Africa. There's a decent array to choose from, including night flying, airbase attacks and defending London during the Blitz but sadly once you get into the game, it becomes apparent that this is a little too ambitious for its own good and although the intent is there, the technology just wasn't up to the job. Once you get into the game properly and get your head around the controls, you'll find that every mission pretty much boils down to the same thing, and which involves flying around a poorly detailed land or sea environment to the perpetual droning of engines, desperately trying to find something to shoot down. Later flight sims have their moments of tedium as you wait for combat to find you, but Spitfire Ace is rather more prone to such things. Even when you do find an enemy to blast away at, it's pretty random stuff and decidedly unsatisfying so it's not long before bordeom sets in. When you throw in the poor visuals you're left with a basic flight sim that isn't really worth your time. Check out Aces over Europe instead for more in the way of genuine thrills.
