Simply forget about the name. Jane's in the past was associated with nice kind of realistic-grade simulations of some the world's greatests military assets: Apache, F-15 Eagle...
This is not the case. This a cheap, generic, bland carbon-copy of Ace Combat or Hawx series, but worse. The game is an arcade flying game when you receive unlimited weapons and ammo so you only need to focus onto the next target and shoot. It's pretty simple and basic and you'll not find any kind of fidelity or something nearly similar to a simulator anywhere in here.
But, if you accept this and just want to enjoy somehow an average arcade game, then it is maybe not that bad. In fact it's really good for the Steam Deck, for example.
The main campaign is a few-hours experience (16 missions in total if I not counted bad) with a totally forgotteable plot and story. There is no real countries or names involved like in Ace Combat, just the real licensed planes, which you unlock just advancing through the missions of the campaign.
There is a great amount of fighter jets in total and even when they have some differences, the experience is pretty similar with nearly all of them. You'll only will notice difference when the mission has some specific roles required like ground attack (better to get an A-10) or air superiority (better to get an F-22, Su-30...)
The missions have great variety of goals and targets and that is nice, even when in the end your final objective is just massacre the hundreds of enemies by yourself. For that, you will have to navigate to them, select the right weapon, track the enemy and shoot when in range (you'll have to wait for "reload" these weapons), deploy countermeasures and evade enemies' missiles and SAMs. As sometimes there is tons of enemies, some situations are really intense and hard to manage. Sometimes the enemies randomly spawn just behind you at 10 miles and that is annoying.
The map is really well done with nice scenarios and good 3D and textures, for a game that has more than a decade. Cities, buildings, airbases, bridges, forests, mountains, all of them look great and have even great details, like a truck in quarry, for example. Same with the jets, where the 3D models and textures are probably one of the strongests points, visually speaking, of this game. Also the sky and the clouds are really good quality (even static). Some certain light conditions (dusk specially) look great aswell.
Sound is pretty average on sound effects and music but with some nice talking and radio transmissions that informs you about the development of mission or the campaing.
I played in my Steam Deck with quick customized control and it worked great, nice combat arcade experience, the lenght of the missions (15-20 minutes each one) really helps to this.
If I have to play this game on my main gaming rig, the review will be totally negative. But on the Steam Deck, where this game makes sense, and for it's price (a pair of bucks when sale or keys), I think it is still recommendable.
Solid 6/10
