Warning: Broken Game!
The game does not launch on modern Windows versions. It crashes to desktop when starting any mission. The developer is aware of the issue and has taken no action to fix the problem or maintain their product.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is an ancient, broken console game from 2011. It's a whopping 14 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone.

Due to the age of this game, the console heritage, and the lack of modernisation, the graphics appear quite dated. This compares poorly to more contemporary games with professional standards. Given that gaming is primarily a visual medium, this is a bit of a problem, so should be taken into account when considering whether to get this game (although being broken should be a bigger factor).

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

Unethically, the developers have left this on the Steam store in an unplayable and broken state. It's the responsibility of the developer to maintain their product, ensure it runs on all modern PCs, or if they determine there's defects and the game doesn't work, they should remove it from sale instead of misleadingly trying to scam gamers into buying knowingly defective products.

This is harmful to Steam and to gamers, not just because it's a direct and intentional attempt to scam people, but because it takes a share of the marketing space and visibility away from other games. It's polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuine games and for genuine indie developers who put months or years into making proper games find an audience.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?

The developer is deliberately and unethically trying to scam gamers into paying them the greedy, cash grab price of $6 USD for a game they know is broken. Don't give it to them.

For comparison, the $6 asking price for this game could get you games that actually work, like "Dishonored 2", "Grand Theft Auto V" or "7 Days to Die". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.