The flight model stays reasonably realistic, the weapon reliability never ceases to disappoint, and under the hood the game models quite a few little details that are overlooked by arcade titles with planes.
SF2 dumps you into a war, generates missions in a semi turn-based fashion and offers you chances to survive or die on a daily basis. That, and a printed list of AI quirks, interface oddities, and strange design decisions. A book or videos on air combat maneuvering is of more use to the player in the end. However SF2 doesn't have any tutorials worth mentioning, and the manual is only somewhat helpful. The main thrills come from combat - not from starting your engines. No, it's a simpler game you can play with a basic joystick (provided it's not a gamepad) keeping only a few keyboard commands in mind. He also, apparently, did some acting for X-Com: Interceptor The designer/coder of SF was involved in finishing that one, and he also did some coding for Jane's Longbow 2. Those in turn seem to inherit quite a lot from European Air War. It's an upgrade over an earlier series of games: Strike Fighters - Project 1, Wings over Vietnam, Wings over Europe and Wings over Israel. Strike Fighters 2 by Third Wire Productions is an aging modular series of indie combat flight sims covering a sizeable chunk of Western (mostly American) aircraft between 1950s and 1970s.
