Chocks Away! Top tips for Battlefield 1943 - Air Superiority

Fight in the middle

Yes, you may feel obligated to defend your base from the attacking zeroes, but the real points are from capturing the, er, capturepoint. With a possible 30 points and minimum of 10 points just for staying in the middle zone. If your team has control, then feel free to pick off any blighters trying to land on your ships, but if your side loses control or the capturepoint is up for grabs, head back into the middle, pronto soldier!

Relaxsh! Thish ish not a raysh!

Apologises for the dreadful Dutch beer pun, but going at full pelt reduces your manoeuvrability giving you massive turning circles whilst also giving your accuracy a massive knock, particularly when shooting at an angle. Slowing down before banking will allow you to make tight turns, and hopefully avoid any embarrassing suicides. The amount of times I've seen people speed up when nose diving toward the sea makes me want to don my mic and shout colourful language at them. I don't however, I'm a gentleman I'll have you know.

I love a bit of cockpit, me.

It may make you bring up last nights chicken korma at first, but take the time to get used to the first person view. It highlights the direction of any enemies who have revealed their position, it improves accuracy by such an amount you are only handicapping yourself by flying third person. On Insider Xbox recently they ran a tips video for air superiority mode, with one of the two chaps flying third person, whilst trying to tell us how to be ‘totally awesome' at it. Thank goodness I no longer live in London, otherwise someone at their offices was an Oyster card away from have an operation to get an original Xbox controller removed from their posterior.

XxX tehd3athkillah XxX, I choose you!

Many of you will probably share the innate characteristic with me. Anyone with a gamertag containing either a) multiple uses of the letter 'x' or b) some kind of euphemism and/or statement hinting at some kind of gaming omnipotence of the 12 year American behind the name, makes you throw all tactics out of the window and hunt the player down with reckless abandon.

Resist! Pick your fights. Taking pot-shots at anything that flies past may net you a few +3 points assists, but the big points are reserved for those who take their time, select their target and give chase. Fly slowly round the edge of the map and wait for the inevitable deluge of easy targets to zoom through the middle. Pick one of them, and because you have been flying slowly you will be able to whip your plane round quickly and give chase. With any luck you will be able to bring them down in a few shots, but even if you only clip them they will start to panic and will be easy to chase, just remember to ease off the throttle when turning. Don't put yourself between two enemy planes however, as you will be brought down before you can do any damage. Always start to follow the last plane in a group.

Please refer to my shocking paint job for visual aids.

I couldn't afford the Photoshop key so had make do with paint. What the above should hint at is the line you should take when attempting to pick a target. As soon as they have gone past (if not slightly before) bank towards the enemy after releasing the throttle, once having got into the right position, speed up and you should have an enemy ripe for plucking.

Don't drink and aim

Again, horrible pun, apologies. Aim a few feet in front of where an enemy is flying, as bullets lose velocity and will fall past if you are aiming directly for the plane. Aiming just ahead will mean the enemy will be flying into your bullets.

Pick ranged fighters

Nothing is more infuriating than the thought of some fat American kid chuckling into his doughnuts as he sits hidden on your ship and blows up your plane as you go to take off. Resist the temptation to hurl Mum jokes at him. Note where he just appeared on your radar, pick the Scout, and give him a gift in the form of a new face-hole.

Suicide is painless. It just costs 10 points

If you are getting gunned down, accept it, keep calm, carry on. Jumping out and killing yourself still gives your assailant a chance at 10 points for destroying your vehicle, loses you 10 points, and makes you look incredibly stupid. Let's be honest, we all look down at the person with -20 points. Get them back in the air, wimp.

Kamikaze!

Not so much a tip, but you will notice some players flying planes directly into others for an easy 20 points. Yes, it's easy points, but it's so much better pulling up at the last second and releasing your bombs onto the skill-less chump below.

While the above tips will help, they won't turn you into your favourite Top Gun character. Rubbing yourself in baby-oil, chucking on some aviators and homo-eroticising even the most mundane of tasks will do that. Your best tip is take make use of the tutorial mode (although quite why you have to run through the tasks every time is beyond me). After a while you will be doing allsorts of back flips, gunning down zeroes whilst pulling barrel rolls, and start shouting down the mic ‘Gold Leader, standing by' at the beginning of every match. Or maybe that's just me. Man I wish DICE would release a Star Wars version of this!!

BF1943 is 1200ms points on Xbox Live, and £9.99 on PSN, with a PC version due for release this month.