Over G Fighters review

Shrieking through the sky at over 600 knots, loosing two heat-seekers at an unidentified foreign bogey should really get your adrenaline pumping, but somehow Over G Fighters manages to completely neuter the experience. Sadly, the game takes a systematic approach to draining all of the fun out of sitting in the cockpit of today's most cutting edge jets.

Over G begins by setting up your fighter's controls with the assumption that you didn't buy this flight-sim for its simulation qualities. The standard "Arcade" controls lock you into steering your jet with the left analog stick (and eliminating your hopes of cool barrel rolls) unless you change the setting in the game's somewhat convoluted, but awesomely animated, menu system. Even after you've changed the controls, even the most nimble jets end up handling as if you're flying sorties at the bottom of a sea of viscous sludge, so your high-speed evasions seem more like backing a garbage truck into a Wal-Mart parking lot.

The molasses-drenched controls provide no avenue for losing missiles once they've locked onto you, and the auto-countermeasures serve almost no purpose whatsoever. If a plane that's barely a speck on the distant horizon gets tone on you, you're going down... no question, you could have all the flares and chaffs in the universe, but you're still bound for the ground. Add to this a complete inability to change targets until your missiles actually destroy the one you've got, and you have an exercise in "not fun" of the highest order.