I saw a video of ace combat the other day (a series I never played but now wish I had) and it got me thinking. It seems that the only pc arcade flight game I can come up with off the top of my head is crimson skies. A great game, but there must be more than that surely? Even the 360 doesn't have any I can think of, Hawx notwithstanding, and this makes me all nostalgic.

Seems everything coming out these days is more heavily sim based, which is great sometimes, but you don't always want to have to spend 20 minutes looking up how to take off. Anyone know any good arcadey flight games that were any good?

There's Dogfighter, but it's even more arcade-y than Crimson Skies.

Wing Commander is very arcadey, it's basically WW2 dogfighting in space with a great storyline.

I honestly don't know whats up with all the complexity in sims nowadays. It's nice, but it shouldn't be the norm:P

Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

There's Wings of Prey, which isn't half bad. It's somewhere in between arcade and simulator though.

Those are some pretty good suggestions. I actually only realised after posting this that Ace combat had some newer games out. As for wing commander, is it anything like Freespace? Space sims are another genre that feels pretty dead except for maybe x3:TC so those are always good. Still prefer to have ground in my flight games though, gives more of an element of speed.

Tom Clancy's HAWX and HAWX 2 are very Ace Combat style.

This.

It's actually less complex then Freespace 2. but more or less same kinda concept, mission based space sim.

Freespace borrowed a few things that Tie Fighter did better, and its wing control is much deeper than the other space series, but for the most part you can trace the main Freespace features back to various Wing Commander games. Wing Commander has more of an action-arcade feel than Freespace. Wing Commander 3 and 4 had ground missions, but you wouldn't mistake them for a flight sim.

Strike Commander and Pacific Strike were action-oriented flight sims from the same company. They included realistic features but made physics and control very forgiving. And they used the Wing Commander method of warping in waves of enemies as each previous wave was defeated.

Many WWII air combat games are quite arcadey. Blazing Angels for example.

Some older sci-fi games to consider would be the Echelon games. Echelon and
Echelon: Wind Warriors. I played the first one of these, and it leans more towards sim than arcade, but It may still be worth looking into.

There is also Aerial Strike: The Yager Missions (or just Yager depending on where you live) isn't a bad choice. Its not the greatest game out there, but Its perfectly competent.

I second Dogfighter, there's lots of fun in that game. It's easy to get into, but still offers a challenge, and it's all done with a great humorous tone.

How is the singleplayer in that? Now im interested, but I don't play multiplayer. I don't need a story line or anything. I have plenty of fun playing Unreal Tournament by myself. I need the variety that UT provides for SP to stay fun for more than a couple of bot-matches.

Maybe the Aquanox games could be a choice for you, biggest difference is that you are underwater and control a one-man-submarine. Good SP Mode with at least good Story, I only played the second one, right after I finished Freespace one and hadn´t much trouble getting into it.