Life and death in cyber dogfight

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

My first arrival at the MSN Gaming Zone felt a bit like joining a new school halfway through term.

Thousands of people were online but, unlike me, all the others seemed to know what they were doing.

But after several minutes I had joined a Combat Flight Simulator game and was flying at 4000ft somewhere over southern England, in a Spitfire IX with the call sign Fretful Centaur.

Four or five other pilots, with names such as Uncle Charlie, Fling Phantom and Mad Major Gordon, were wheeling around in a variety of other Second World War aircraft.

I had little time to ponder the fact that real people were piloting the other planes because I had joined a "free for all" game, where you either killed or were killed - and very soon I had managed both.

My opponents could have been based anywhere in the world, and I briefly imagined them sitting at home or "working late" in offices, but here we were, all sharing the same patch of virtual sky.

The sound of a machinegun interrupted further thought on this matter. Until now I had pitted my flying skills only against computerised enemies, but the next few moments could have come straight out of a Biggles book.

Coming out of nowhere, Mad Major Gordon had latched on to my tail, and with one long gun burst had scored hits all over my aircraft.

The engine started to splutter as I jinked around trying to escape the murderous hail of bullets.

But I was losing altitude all the time and the inevitable crash followed a few moments later.

As soon as you die, the program immediately restarts you in flying mode, and this time I was luckier, managing to catch Fling Phantom napping.

As I closed behind him with my finger firmly pressed on the joystick gun button, I was surprised to see I was registering hits.

Unfortunately, I pressed the attack home a little too enthusiastically and rear-ended him, destroying us both.

After 15 minutes of flying I was shot down a further four times and achieved two more "victories" by collisions.

At least this had proved that my ihug Ultra internet connection, which is fast downstream but only runs at the ordinary 56k upstream, was keeping pace with the Microsoft server.

I can't wait to fly again, because playing online easily beats any previous computer gaming experience I have enjoyed.