The Second World War is surely the most simulated conflict in computer gaming history, and it's this war in which Microsoft has chosen to set its latest Combat Flight Simulator. So wax and twirl your moustache, starch your clichés and it's "tally ho bing" for another spiffing dogfight in the skies above France. What-what.

Subtitled 'the Battle for Europe', Combat Flight Simulator 3 has a sparkling new dynamic campaign mode. This begins in 1943 and carries on until the end of the war (or until you have an unfortunate, unplanned, high speed meeting with Mr. Ground), the general idea being that you plan your own missions on a tactical map of Europe, which shows the war's progress.

You can pick a spot to strike on the front line and, should you command a few successful sorties, the enemy will eventually be pushed back, the goal being to hem them in behind London or Berlin depending on whether you're playing the axis or the allies (and with the latter, you can choose to fly for the RAF or the Yanks).

At least this is the theory. In practice you gain "prestige points" for completing missions and these can be used to launch ground attacks at the enemy which push them back. However, it takes a lot of points-earning to make any real impact on the war; which is probably how it should be, given that you're just one person. But this makes the campaign feel rather a lengthy grind.

It's just as well that there's plenty of variety in the missions you can opt to fly, from bombing runs through to escort missions, recon, intercept dogfights, low level strafing of airfields and so on, with a diverse range of targets to pick from too. Combat Flight Simulator 3 actually puts quite an emphasis on bomber flight as well as your standard fighter missions; you man the bombardier's sights yourself on the bombing missions.

And as you'll be spending a fair bit of time flying at low level on such exercises, Microsoft has overhauled the Combat Flight Simulator graphics engine to look much cleaner at low altitudes. This measure is very effective, plus there are some impressive extra details like the superb new cloud cover (which can actually be hidden in and used tactically).

However, this comes at a price, for the new Combat Flight Simulator 3 graphics engine runs pretty sluggishly all round. On our review rig (a 1.2 GHz processor with 256MB of RAM and a Geforce 2 Ultra graphics card) it ran jerkily even in 800 x 600 mode, with only average detail settings. This was especially true when flying close to the ground. And the game is not sufficiently jaw-dropping in the looks department to justify this sort of a performance hit, either.

Aside from the main campaign, there's a decent range of one-off missions to fly and a well fleshed-out set of multiplayer options, with deathmatch and co-operative play modes catered for. Combat Flight Simulator 3 is a decent, all round package, but we had hoped for something more fulfilling from this third outing, and the dynamic campaign could have been better implemented.

Combat Flight Simulator 3 is very much a mixed bag. The dynamic campaign is impressive in many respects, yet somewhat stagnant, and the improved low flight visuals are a double-edged sword. Combat Flight Simulator veterans will find plenty of gameplay to get their teeth into and it's a decent enough effort; just lacking somewhat in pizzazz. And low-spec PC owners need not apply!