Russian developer Madia earned a PCG Editors’ Choice award for Echelon when this futuristic flight combat sim shipped three years ago. An equally ambitious sequel has just made it to North American shores, and although it’s not as fresh or original as its parent game, you’ll still eat up the “blow-the-living-crap-out-of-stuff” experience.

Set in the same far-flung 24th century, Echelon: Wind Warriors is a planetary-based aerial combat sim that features 18 exotic-looking warplanes. Each of these hover-capable aircraft boasts unique handling and performance characteristics — from nimble to ungainly — with individual mission goals ultimately determining which you fly at any point.

The background canvas is huge. The primary continental battle theater stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction, and the wildly diverse topography is consistently attractive in spite of the recycled Echelon graphics engine. Virtually everything on the landscape is destructible, which adds to the fun as you gleefully blast scores of enemy air and ground targets into pixel-dust with all of the guided missiles and plasma weapons that your aircraft’s hardpoints can support.

A linear 40-mission campaign lies at the heart of the single-player game. This protracted engagement boasts enough depth to keep you aloft for weeks. Aerial dogfights and stealth reconnaissance missions intermix freely with tank- and ship-busting sorties. The enemy AI poses a challenging fight at every turn. Your wingmen will also carry out their assignments without constant babysitting, and the sense of accomplishment that you’ll feel at the conclusion of some of these multi-phase marathons is quite palpable.

Unfortunately, many of the missions are so difficult that you can easily get stuck for hours replaying them over and over in a frantic bid to advance the campaign. A save-as-you-go feature would have worked wonders here, but regrettably, you can save the game only upon successfully concluding a mission.

Should these campaign tribulations wear you down, Wind Warriors also ships with a handful of standalone and training missions, a basic mission editor, and a hiccup-free GameSpy-fueled Internet multiplayer component (supporting up to 32 players in both head-to-head and co-op modes). Co-op ground-attack missions are a particular delight.

The game sports a clumsily implemented mouse-control feature à la Freelancer, but it’s too awkward to be of any real use. Joystick-equipped gamers will definitely find the going much smoother.

Mouse-control issues and gameplay imbalances aren’t the only glitches. A broken autopilot feature regularly flies your machine into mountains or other aircraft. A non-stop stream of foul-mouthed invective from your AI base commander also weakens the gaming experience. (Hey, I can swear with the best of them, but the obscenity-laced dialogue seems to have been scripted purely for shock value.)

Factor in Wind Warrior’s $20 budget-title pricing, however, and it’s easy to forgive the game its occasional sins. Especially with all of the rich content and distracting pyrotechnics that it has to offer.

— Andy Mahood