The graphics are sharper, better detailed, and the most dramatically improved element of the franchise. The artists did outstanding work giving skies, sunsets, and smoke more depth. Aiding realism, the planes wear a weathered look. Objects on the ground such as fleets of ships and their wakes are improved. Special effects like bullet holes or missing parts ably depict damage, and the plume of fire and smoke trailing ignited craft is thoroughly impressive. The weather features of Flight Simulator 2000 are available, so flying in inclement weather while landing on the carrier at night is possible if you're crazy enough to want it. Play the game with a 3D graphics card at a high resolution and the visuals appear almost photographic in quality.
Other valued features from Combat Flight Simulator make repeat appearances here. The flight model seems realistic and makes apparent the striking differences between flying the heavy American fighters and the agile Japanese craft. True to historical claims, the vaunted Corsair is easy to stall and spin, and the Japanese fighters easily ignited in combat. Landing on the carrier in Combat Flight Simulator 2 is truly challenging and I managed it only a few times in many attempts. Microsoft has made the flight model configurable for all skill levels, however, and for those more interested in flying and fighting, landing and travel sequences can be skipped with a hot key. Some notable touches have been added, a favorite being the shuddering of the Zero as it reaches high speeds, though the American aircraft should suffer from the same laws of physics and they don't appear to in this regard. Aircraft can be pushed violently by flak bursts, and the damage done to an aircraft does affect its performance; a craft may roll poorly due to loss of a control surface, or find its engine is malfunctioning due to flak hits. While landing is certainly not a given, neither are takeoffs. In the original Combat Flight Simulator, planes would almost lift off by themselves but don't count on that here, especially with the conservative runway lengths of an aircraft carrier. A plane laden with bombs also requires a careful hand in getting airborne.
The campaigns include a good mixture of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, some incorporating escort duties. The code is stable and my time with it was crash free, though I did witness an interesting bug where a Japanese destroyer cruised on both land and water. And like all the installments in the Flight Simulator series, the engine is open to third party additions and enhancements. There's plenty of room for growth, as the included campaigns touch on the early American land-based fighting, Midway, and some island hopping support, but leave many famous battles out.
What of Combat Flight Simulator 2's performance, and will it deny the hordes of general users so important to the sales figures? The developers claim the engine incorporates the new features of Flight Simulator 2000 while improving its efficiency. The test system used for this review is shameful by Sharky Extreme standards (a machine with a Celeron 300 overclocked to 450) but Combat Flight Simulator 2 acquitted itself well. General flight with medium detail settings was smooth at 1024x768x32, though stuttering appears during some combat and the system was more comfortable at lower resolutions. The configuration panel is excellent and provides good scalability. Still, the game is no pushover and prefers a solid video card and ample memory, which the test system did have (NVIDIA TNT2 video card with 32MB RAM, main system 128MB RAM).