Tom Clancy's HAWX

"Suddenly you have a tool that allows you to understand who is doing what, what your plane is doing and how you can act against a specific enemy or specific threat," Simon explains. "This changes everything, because it's not just a plane game, it's also pure gameplay joy."

It's also apparent that Ubi's Bucharest studio has made a conscious decision to design the missions in a free-flowing manner that ultimately requires intelligent, strategic decisions. The opening mission, for example, tasks you with protecting a refinery from waves of attack, both ground and air based. Your first instinct might be to shoot whatever happens to be in the vicinity at any given point, but further inspection reveals that taking out incoming AH-64s and Jaguars might prove to be a better idea than wasting time slow-moving tanks.

In common with other Tom Clancy games, there's a subtle but not overbearing degree of strategic command over other units, allowing you to call for assistance in both single and multiplayer by pressing up or down on the d-pad. In multiplayer, you're able to instruct your team-mates to attack your target, and they can press up to accept or down to cancel. Voice recognition will also be included, allowing players to bark a limited array of orders over a headset like a hassled Tom Cruise.

Elsewhere, Ubisoft is making heady boasts about the sheer scale of the maps. While the 120km-by-120km maps might sound impressively vast, Simon says that the player is reined in to stop them drifting too far from the action. Escort missions, meanwhile, gradually take in the full scale of map, including daring low-level runs where you take out anti-aircraft equipment to allow the safe passage of nearby bombers.

With "one pixel-per-metre" detail levels promised, the overall look and feel of the game builds on Ubi's long-running track record of jaw-dropping fly-by sequences, as seen in GRAW and R6 Vegas, as well as some of the potential in the promising-but-flawed Blazing Angels. If, like me, you've been skeptical of HAWX based on Ubisoft Bucharest's patchy recent console track record, a few minutes of actual hands-on time with its latest effort blows apathetic preconceptions out of the sky.

Ubisoft also had the game's online team deathmatch mode for us to get to grips with. Based on four-on-four dogfighting, it takes some of the instant action elements of the campaign mode and turns them into a crazed fight to the death. The rules of engagement are simple: both teams spawn at opposite sides of one of 17 maps, and hare after each other with violent intent. You start by selecting an aircraft, and each is grouped into three different categories: Air Superiority, Ground Support or Multi-Role. For example, the FA22 is a bit of a show pony, specialised for air-to-air combat with a high angle of attack and small payload, but generally unstable, whereas the A10 is a good ground support choice, able to lock onto fast ground targets and deliver a heavy payload. In a team situation, a good tactic is to mix up the ammo types, with, say, one player tooling up with quicker reloading but shorter range missiles, and the other opting for longer range, slower reloading missiles.

Overall, more than 50 licensed aircraft feature, with even more promised post-release via downloadable content. As was the case in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, a fully-fledged experience system is prevalent in all aspects of the game, both offline and on, unlocking useful items as you progress, from more powerful weaponry to skins and more advanced aircraft. "The spirit is the same. You play in the order that you want. Whatever you do during the game will be rewarded by experience points, so you don't have to worry about starting at the beginning of the campaign," says Simon.

"Obviously the best learning curve experience would be to start playing the campaign by yourself and then play with your friends, because with more people in the co-operative campaign, the more the difficulty increases, but it's really up to you. You also have some challenges that will either unlock Achievements or special XP rewards that are designed to be achievable with more than one person. I mean, one single guy could do it, but it could be really hardcore." Online co-op is completely flexible, allowing friends to join in and aid/hinder your campaign regardless of their own progress.

Simon insists that a host of new features will not only introduce a new audience to the genre, but tempt back many lapsed players who haven't bothered buying a game like this for years. We can buy that. The easy-to-use Enhanced Reality System (ERS) acts like a sky-based Sat Nav system, gently pointing you in the right direction without holding your hand too much. The new external camera system works far better than it logically ought to, while the use of real-world satellite data helps give the game that sense of place that few flight combat games have ever been able to pull off convincingly. Factor in the intrigue of a decent storyline, and the extra context given to it through weaving the narrative into several concurrent events in other Tom Clancy games, and it suddenly all starts looking an exciting and convincing prospect. And gutsy.