Air Warrior III review (PC)

Of course if you go online everything seems to make some sense and you can actually talk to people using a microphone-transmission system called Network Speech rather than just typing out messages. You can talk with 16 different people on one channel, and it really works, though it does take some finessing. Online Air Warrior III, like most other big multiplayer games, is a fun experience - even more so if you know what you are doing.

Graphically, the Direct3D acceleration helps a bunch; the ground, sky, and aircraft textures are wonderful. Less than ideal, however, are the rather dull-looking explosions. During combat, aircraft take a few hits, stream smoke, then blow up in cheesy fireballs and puffs of black smoke. Explosions on the ground from bomb hits are the same as explosions in the air, except they cycle through the sequence over and over again.

If all you want to do is fly online, and you don't want to pay a single penny (for now anyway), you can just swing over to the Kesmai Air Warrior site, download the front end, and play for free in the beta arenas. You don't even need the boxed game. So if you are really itching to find out how Air Warrior III is, fly it for yourself, free of charge.