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At first glance Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer looks the most comprehensive, detailed flight simulation around. With Interceptor and other 3D filled-vector games, Electronic Arts have built up over the years a strong reputation for flight sims, and the question must be: does Chuck Yeager's AFT live up to that tradition?

The game boldly announces that it features eighteen different aircraft to fly, ranging from the humble Cessna, through P-51 Mustangs, Spads and F-18s right up to Space Shuttles, X-19s and the top-secret FY117A Stealth Fighter. You can even go formation flying with the Blue Angels. It contains myriad camera views: cockpit display, chase plane, satellite and tower. And for the beginner there's a concise, easy-to-follow guide to getting airborne.

Taking the flying course is definitely recommended. Using ugly-looking PC-inspired menus, you select Flying Training Day 1 and find yourself strapped into the Cessna, looking out from 10,000 feet. The plane is controlled by the computer (posing as Chuck), and on-screen text indicates the appropriate action you need to maintain speed and stay in the sky. Small HUD marks show Chuck's current joystick, rudder and throttle positions and the objective is to match them using your own controls. When you've done this a few times and stayed close to the marks, it's time to hit the I key and take over.

At his point Chuck still follows through, his indicators providing you with much-needed cues. Complete the Day 1 lessons correctly and you're unceremoniously dumped back at the menu section to pick the next day's education. So it goes until you've mastered climbing, descending, co-ordinated turns, taking off and landing. Gradually you move onto the tougher training and learn how to cope with stalls, pull aileron rolls, loop and perform other up-Chucking manoeuvres.

After that, it's formation flying training and racing preparation. Then you notice, because you're observant like that, there's no spooky Mr Military-Head type missions. No "Fly the world, meet innerestin' people and drop bombs on them" stuff. It's just lots of banking, rolling, flying, crashing, flying and more flying.

So maybe that's a good idea. Maybe the mach-2, mass-murder sims have been done to death. Maybe Chuck Yeager's AFT takes a different tack and provides you with the simple enjoyment of classic, skilled flying.

Except it doesn't. Real flying is heart-thumping pit-of-the-stomach stuff, not boring. From a real aircraft the mountains are awesome and complex examples of nature's stunning beauty, not dull brown pyramids that jump 30 metres in three second increments.

Chuck's big problem is without doubt its inability to redraw screens fast enough to fool the eye, compounded by inadequate reading of joystick or keyboard. The joystick cursor moves by huge amounts, causing you to nose over too heavily. Then you're heading for the deck, desperately trying to pull back up, at which time the joystick reader decides to go on holiday. Uncontrollable chaos.

Presentation and execution are awful and the game makes no attempt to hide its PC Contemptible heredity. Menus and character sets are unspeakably dull, as are the cockpit graphics, airplane shape definitions and loading screens. The overall effect is wretched.

Avoid, avoid, avoid and then some. EA are capable of much, much better. Feeble attempts to increase the attractiveness of the program by including an audio cassette fail miserably. The dulcet tones of Chuck (yea, 'tis the man himself) Yeager telling you "Your black balls get larger when you go too close to the ground" are more likely to cause laughter-induced crashes than inspire confidence.

A sad attempt at a flight sim, with nothing going for it except the fact that all the procedures are 100% accurate. You could just as easily buy Trevor Thom's pilot training manuals to find that out. They may not give you the feel of flying a real plane - but then, neither does Chuck Yeager's AFT.