Carl Doherty reviews both the PS3 and 360 versions of Saitek’s Aviator flight stick.

Flight sims, or even the arcade equivalent such as Tom Clancy’s HAWX, really need a decent stick to get the most out of. Experiencing the giddy dogfights of IL-2: Sturmovik through a gamepad is like playing Street Fighter without a £150 arcade stick; not half as much fun.

Saitek’s Aviator is a reasonably priced twist axis flight stick that is aimed at those wanting a balance between an immersive control layout and a compact, practical design. It doesn’t offer quite the enhancement that the more specialist-orientated (and more expensive) PC flight sticks do, but for the arcade style shooters available on the PS3 and Xbox 360 it more than does the job.

Apart from a slightly different finish, both the PS3 and 360 sticks are near-identical, though the 360 edition does feature 2 additional buttons and a headset connector. Unlike the 360’s coloured buttons, the button decals on the PS3 Aviator’s head are modelled after crosshairs, which is a nice touch.

I tested the sticks with Tom Clancy’s HAWX and Blazing Angels 2 on both systems, and the Xbox 360 exclusive Ace Combat. Both sticks feature a switch for changing the button assignments to suit particular games: M1 is used for HAWX, Ace Combat and, according to the instruction manual “any future flight simulation games”, while M2 caters for Blazing Angels 1 and 2. Ace Combat needed minor configuring, while Blazing Angels 2 was the only game to cause any degree of problems, requiring the switch to be returned to M1 during several menus, and back again during gameplay. But other than that both worked great; the twist axis works especially well on HAWX.