Heroes Over Europe is the follow-up title to the successful Heroes of the Pacific, offering more World War II flight combat action for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. It is being developed by Transmission Games in Melbourne and is due for release next year. We checked it out at the Leipzig Games Convention - and in case you're wondering, yes, it is a little weird previewing a World War II game while actually being in Germany.

First up, it should be noted that Heroes is not a flight simulator. It's an arcade-slash-action game. If you're looking for a full-on sim game, you'll have to go elsewhere.

Heroes Over Europe is packing a pretty impressive feature list though. 40 meticulously detailed aircraft are available to fly in the game, including all the major fighters of World War II - Spitfire, Mustang, Messerschmitt - the list goes on. You'll get the chance to engage Ze Germans in 16 of the major airborne actions of the war in extremely detailed environments - cities and buildings are accurately recreated (presumably to make bombing them more fun), with landmarks like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace apparently recreated in London.

A particularly impressive part of the graphical system is the volumetric clouds. Clouds are something that we've seen a lot of improvement with in flight sims over the last few years, and it's safe to say that the clouds on offer in Heroes are probably the best I've seen in anything to-date. They're an important part of your air combat strategy - indeed, the first fight demonstrated showed a squad of enemy fighters appearing out of a cloud formation. There will also be fog and other weather effects, although we weren't shown any of these.

One big new feature is the "Ace Kill" system. Once you get an enemy in your sights for a while you'll charge up your "Ace Kill" meter - once you've gotten it past a certain point you can zoom into this new mode, which will give you a Bullet-Time-like view of the enemy and let you try and pick off some key points of their plane with your guns - hit the fuel tank and the whole plane will burst into flames, or pick off the pilot and it'll just drop out of the sky.

Another neat addition is "Evade Cam". This is basically a slow-motion view when someone is shooting at you that allows you to try and dodge the incoming fire. If you think about this in conjunction with Ace Kill, you'll quickly see how multiplayer games might get interesting. Multiplayer is a key part of the game, with up to 16 players being able to play at once in four different multiplayer modes, including regular dog fighting and team dog fighting.

There's also a "Conquest" mode which was explained as being sort of like the VIP mode in Counter-Strike, except a) you're guarding a bomber on the way to the enemy base and b) it is hoped that it won't be as boring as being the VIP. If you're flying the bomber, you'll have access to the nine different turrets, and you'll be automatically switched between whichever turret is best positioned to take out incoming enemy fighters. Additionally in the online space, leaderboards and downloadable content will be available.

There were some painful drops in frame-rate in a few spots, but generally speaking the game is looking pretty sweet. While there'll no doubt be groans about "yet another World War II" game, let's not forget - they keep makin' them because we keep buyin' them. If you're into air combat and want an up-close and personal dog fighting game with some good potential in the multiplayer department, this'll be one to add to your watch list.