Freedom Wings is a 3-D flight combat simulator that takes you to war-torn Sorgere Island. It combines traditional dogfighting, a story mode, and RPG elements like collecting cash, building up experience, and upgrading your plane.

You start off on the ground, preparing for your next sortie. You can go to the Airport (to take off), the Cafe (to get information from the locals), or the Shop (to upgrade your plane). The Shop lets you outfit your plane with armor, new wings, or new guns, or fix any damage that's been done. You start off with a plane called the I-16 (which looks like a P-51 Mustang) that is armed with 6mm guns. Once you get into a dogfight you'll find that these guns don't do much. You plane is rated in various categories, and outfitting it with new gear improves its performance.

The Cafe allows you to talk to local pilots and get some information about what's going on in the skies. The E3 demo has you talking to a pilot who has been attacked by air pirates - exactly the guys you wind up going after during your first dogfight.

Going to the Airport is where things get interesting. Choosing Takeoff gets you up in the air, where you first discover Automatic vs. Manual control. I noticed that nobody was playing Freedom Wings that much, and I realized that that was because it starts your plane in auto-pilot mode. With auto-pilot you don't control the plane with the D-Pad; you can choose whether you go left or right with the L and R shoulder buttons, but you go in a straight line the whole time. The weird thing about this is that the game lets you stay in this mode during a dogfight, which is completely impractical because you can't maneuver at all. Once I figured out that you had to switch to manual control, things became a lot more fun. I didn't see this anywhere in the booth instructions, and it would have helped a lot.

In auto-pilot you have radar on the top screen and your plane is on the touch screen. This is fine since you can't really steer. You can adjust speed and altitude with the stylus (speed on the left, altitude on the right) by sliding gauges up and down. You can change the camera angle of your plane by moving the stylus around in the center of the screen. To switch to Manual mode, you tap "Manual" in the top-right corner.

In Manual mode, you control your plane as usual with the D-Pad. The view of your plane shifts to the top screen and your bottom screen becomes a map. You can see bogeys on this map as red circles. I found the controls to be much too sensitive, making it very easy to oversteer. When enemies appear on the map, you get a text alert and start chasing them. Since I only had 6mm guns, it was difficult to actually take down another plane. It was satisfying, mainly because it had taken me a while to figure everything out. When you take out a plane you're rewarded with Gold and Experience, presumably to use at the Cafe/upgrade your pilot's skills.

Graphically, there's nothing too spectacular here. 3-D models are pretty ugly and textures are very pixelated. Nanostray this ain't. Overall, Freedom Wings looks like it could be interesting but it needs improvement in its graphics engine and control scheme.