The gameplay in Flight Simulator could be a whole review by itself, depending on which mode you choose you will have different objectives, planes, and enemies.

For example, choosing quick combat allows you to jump right into the action by selecting a plane, number of wingmen, enemies, location, weather, and then tossing you into the fray. These quick fights are good for when you want to just blow things up without committing too much time to the battle.

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Free flight is yet another option you can choose from. You choose a plane, weather, location, and head off into the wild blue yonder to do whatever you want without worrying about who is trying to shoot you down. This is for when you get into the mood to take a 700hp WWII machine out for a spin and who wouldn't? The main draw of the game, and where most of the attention is given, is the Campaigns. They allow you to participate in the history of the Pacific Theatre from day one, up to that of the war. This is where CFSII both shines and falls flat on it's face. There are two campaigns to choose from: the Japanese campaign and the American. Depending on which you choose, you will have different missions, planes, and bases. The first thing you do when starting a campaign, after selecting which side you want to fight for, is create your pilot which is as simple as giving yourself a name. From there you are thrown into history. Story board type visuals and audio set the mood for your flights. You have access to the "scuttlebutt" which is your rumor mill, where you can pick up on small details that may help you with your upcoming mission. Details, mission briefing and planning are available here also to help you fine tune everything before you jump into your plane.

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After getting everything setup to your liking you are ready to go. Here is where things get both exciting and as boring as watching grass grow, depending on how realistic you want your experience to be. You will usually start your missions on a carrier deck or on some remote airfield. Your engine will be off and it's up to you to get it started. You did read the manual, didn't you? You have two choices here if you're a SIM buff and want to go through all the details of fuel mixtures, magnetos, etc., etc. you can. Or you can press "E" and your engine will start right up for you. If you have not taken a look in the manual by now, you should, because even though Microsoft tried to make the game as accessible as possible, you still need to learn and know the basics of handling a plane to get it off the ground, fly, and fight in it.

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Almost every mission in CFSII functions the same. You take off, fly to your assigned waypoint, do whatever was assigned to do and return home. Sounds easy enough, right? Recall that you are not in an F-14 doing a couple of thousand MPH with an autopilot to keep you in level flight. You are in a WWII fighter that has to fly anywhere between 20 miles to a few thousand to complete your missions and your maximum speeds in level flight hover around 135mph-220mph. This leads to some very long and boring flights, but the guys who fought back then did not have a choice. Luckily, you do. You can press "X" and you will be magically warped to your next waypoint saving you from looking at absolutely nothing for a few hours. Now here is where the fun starts. Depending on your mission you will find yourself tangling with other fighters, bombers ready to wipe the sky with you, destroyers or ground troops. During the course of the fight you may take damage that will effect how easy the flight back home is, or just get blown up, ending your pilot's career. Combine all of that with a mix of radio chatter, changing weather, bullets flying at you, wingmen calling for help and you start to get the idea of what it was like to fly a WWII fighter. Remember how I told you the campaign is also where CFSII falls on it's face? Well, the reason is that it is basically a static campaign, meaning no matter how well you fight, no matter how many enemy planes you take down, if you're playing the Japanese side you will always lose at the end of the war. With the American side you can go through and fail every mission and at the end of the campaign you will win. Microsoft's reasoning behind this was "No matter what you do, you can't change history". Methinks that someone was just being lazy and did not want to put in the effort to make a fully dynamic campaign. The other problem is that you can only choose one difficult setting, meaning all of the enemies in the campaign will either be easy, medium or difficult. I would've liked to have seen a "random" enemy setting for campaigns as I'm pretty sure that during the real war not all the enemies were "easy".

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