The planes look great; there's no question about that. Many times I found myself switching to third person and 'bomber' modes just to look at my plane. The cities and environments, however could use a lot of work. From a distance, they look awesome, but once you get close to them, they don't look as spectacular. Thankfully, if you're this close to the ground anyway, you're probably about to die. There are a few nice effects used, such as cloud coverage, but that's about it. Explosions are nearly laughable and I'm still questioning why buildings don't smolder after you bomb the hell out of them. Actually, unless it's a 'main target' building, you will see no sign that missiles even hit the building. Instead of at least some smoke, the missile just fizzles out and doesn't even dent the thing.
There is quite a bit of fogging that tries to hide the horizon pop-up. Mountains just pop into existence right before your eyes. It's not as bad as Summoner, but it's just not attractive. The fogging also makes visually finding bogeys next to impossible, which you pretty much have to since the radar is not the easiest thing to use.
If you're expecting to hear 'Danger Zone' or the 'Top Gun Anthem', you will be disappointed. None of the music from the movie is used. In fact, the only real references I could find to the movie (other than the game's title) were that some of the songs were named after lines in the movie, such as 'Flying against a Ghost'. The machine gun, missile, and jet engines are good, but like everything else lacking.
