Airfix Dogfighter review (PC)

The increasing difficulty of the missions in Airfix Dogfighter may also prove to be an issue. The first five or six missions are relatively easy, as you only need to go directly for your primary and secondary objectives rather than worry about the status of tertiary enemy units. Since there are only ten missions per campaign, you can easily get through a good portion of the game in less than a few hours - but around the sixth mission, the difficulty significantly increases. Instead of just selecting the default plane for the mission, you actually have to take each available plane's unique attributes into consideration. In one particular mission, you must fly your way into a child's bedroom to retrieve a key that opens the bathroom door. The room is moderately protected with tanks and antiaircraft weaponry. But inside the bathroom, there's a barrage of antiaircraft artillery waiting for you, and it is practically unavoidable, as the antiaircraft weapons are strategically placed in areas above the main flight area and below it. Therefore, you'll need to select a plane that can take a substantial amount of damage but that is also maneuverable in the small bathroom space. You'll only pick up on these sorts of details after some trial and error.

In addition to the single-player campaigns, Airfix Dogfighter has an excellent multiplayer mode. You and seven other players can dogfight in several different areas, or you can opt to make your own maps in the game's house editor mode. The house editor mode lets you edit rooms in the house by adding items or different environmental conditions, like flooding. While it's fairly easy to use the editor, the interface is a little simplistic, and it doesn't really give you much in the way of customization other than item placement. If you're having difficulty in finding opponents, the multiplayer mode essentially just turns into a skirmish mode in which you can fight against computer-controlled planes and tanks. Customization doesn't stop at the house editing feature - since the Airfix brand deals with model airplanes, Airfix Dogfighter also includes a sticker editor mode, which lets you edit logos that appear on the wings, nose, and tail of a plane. There are more than ten stickers included, all of which you can edit, or you can create an entirely new sticker from scratch. Both customized maps and stickers can be used in the multiplayer mode.

Essentially, Airfix Dogfighter is a fun and uniquely themed action game inspired by World War II model airplanes. What other PC game lets you pilot actual planes from World War II within a suburban house? The premise and the mechanics of the game might not appeal to fans of typical flight simulators, since your Airfix planes can bounce off objects and even hover in midair as they go about their missions. But the game's only real serious drawback is the lack of a diverse campaign mode, which would give a real incentive for playing through both factions other than seeing different areas of the house. Then again, just one of the two campaigns along with the multiplayer mode and customization features should be enough to keep you busy with Airfix Dogfighter for a while.