On June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons, "The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin." Unfortunately, when I received this game, the battle to get this damn program to run began. Let me start by saying I was really looking forward to this title. I expected to jump into the cockpit of a Spitfire or Hurricane, fire up the engine and take part in a furious air battle that would rival the end space battle of Return of the Jedi. Instead of Return of the Jedi, I got The Phantom Menace. Just when you think you’re about to get sucked into a harrowing dogfight with a Nazi pilot who is so close to your tail flaps, that you can smell the bratwurst on his breath, you crash. You crash to your desktop.

Battle of Britain attempts to recreate the terrifying aerial attacks during World War 2 over Britain during the summer of 1940 and through October. Hitler planned to unleash an invasion against Britain, but first he had to get his troops across the Channel. The invasion was code-named Sea Lion. In order for Sea Lion to be a success, Germany needed to establish air supremacy. To do this the Luftwaffe had to annihilate the RAF. In Rowan’s Battle of Britain the player can choose to fly many different missions during this phase of the war, all of which have varying goals and difficulty. You can take part in air raids in order to destroy British radar installations and industrial facilities. Or you can fly for the Royal Air Force and protect your homeland at all cost by shooting down as many Nazi aircraft as possible. BoB has some nice features, but my copy was so bug ridden it was hard to enjoy them. This of course was extremely disappointing given the large scope of this game, and its potential.

First of all the box promises intense, realistic aerial combat, not only from the Royal Air Force perspective, but the Luftwaffe as well. This is very cool, not to mention that the fighter plane models made me drool all over my keyboard. Aircraft available include the British Spitfire and Hurricane as well as the German Messerschmitt BF109 and BF 110 among others. There are three types of game-play options: Quick Shots, Campaign and Multi-player. The Quick Shots option allows you to hop into an aircraft and fly immediately. You can choose between twenty-eight available missions. These missions range from easy basic training, such as take off and landing drills, to full blown historic combat situations. You can even choose to modify the mission’s time of day, or the airfield on which to depart from. In fact BoB has many options so you can customize to individual preference. One of the best choices offered is the option of novice or realistic simulation. If you are a true flight simulation buff, choose realistic. That way you can figure out how to control the propeller pitch, which alters the angle of the propeller blades, or memorize how many strokes you need to prime the engine in 20-degree weather. Yeah, that’s good for some, but not everyone can get into that. Here’s where the novice alternative becomes a nice feature. If you choose to play on this level, game-play resembles an arcade style where the player can get up in the sky, and start fraggin’ instead of worrying about engines stalling. The aircraft is much easier to handle as well. When you play on realistic mode, spinning out of control is very easy to accomplish without ever really trying, because the sensitivity of the controls are increased.

In Campaign mode you can choose to take command of the RAF or Luftwaffe, and plan out entire attacks. The player can follow the whole conflict from July 10th to September 15th 1940, which is where the simulation ends. This style of play gets a bit involved however, and the learning curve requires patience and perseverance. After you issue orders to a selected squadron, you can actually jump inside one of the aircraft under your command, and try to help sway the outcome of battle, which is very cool. Multi-player is supported through LAN or modem, but I never got that far with it, and I’ll tell you why.

The troubles with BoB actually started at the very beginning with the install process. It got to the halfway mark then it just locked. I’ve never seen that happen before. Reboot start over. The second install completed without a hitch, but I felt a bit wary when I saw the main menu screen sort of shake around a bit. Sure it was a rather slow type of stuttering shudder shake, but a shake nonetheless. Not good. I decided to take a Spitfire out for a spin in the Quick Shots option. Funny thing was, whenever I completed a mission I would get this annoying error message during the debrief screen and then crash to the desktop. I tried several different missions to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t. To make matters worse, upon taking off, the aircraft actually seemed to get stuck in the ground, the landing gear would disappear into the runway, and the plane would just kind of stammer for a couple of seconds. Sometimes I could raise the landing gear, and sometimes I could not. And when I crashed (even I occasionally get shot down) part of my Spitfire just vanished into the ground. I called TalonSoft tech support and they informed me that Empire Interactive is experiencing reports of the desktop crash, and they’re working on a patch right now. A few days later they told me to try a new untested patch to see if it took care of the problems. I’m saddened to say it made them worse. TalonSoft tech support was very attentive, but the best solution is to update your ASPI and 3D drivers. There is no guarantee this will work though. Is this title worth parting with your hard-earned paper? Well there is no denying that the parts that work are fun to play, and there are a lot of good features within the program. I find it unforgivable that the version you get may not be playable right out of the box. Hopefully a patch will be available soon.  

Install: Medium
There is no minimum or maximum install option, it is one size fits all. I experienced a lockup halfway through the install process on two separate occasions. Eventually I got it onto my computer, but you may want to update your ASPI drivers first, and make sure that you are running the most current version of DirectX.

Gameplay: 7
The game is fun, once you are able to get it running properly. The amount of customizable options is a big plus.

Graphics: 7 
Aircraft models are sweet, but the terrain looks weak at times.

Sound: 7
Appropriate engine sounds, and machine gun fire. The radio chatter is cool, but there is not much atmosphere here, and not much music.

Difficulty: 10
While playing on the realistic setting is a challenge, I found playing through the software’s bugs the real challenge.

Concept: 6 
World War 2 flight simulation. It’s been done before, and it will be done again.

Multiplayer: 7
This has potential if you have a fast connection, and you can get the game to install

Overall: 6.5
Dog-fighting during the Battle of Britain. The bugs alone dictate the low score. There is fun value here, but you might want to wait until there is a patch available that can fix the problems some gamers are experiencing with this title.