Summary
I liked this game so much I decided to resurrect it
The Good
Sopwith is just a really fun game to play. The "easy" (single player) mode gives a gentle introduction to the plane's controls (far simpler than any 3D flight simulator). Once those skills are mastered, you can play against the computer with enemy planes. The enemy plane logic is extremely good - there's no easy technique to defeat them, but you can have really engrossing dogfights trying. The greatest thing is when you have two enemy planes on your tail and you get them to collide.
The Bad
Sopwith could have done with more than one level. The single player mode was a bit too easy, but the single player vs computer mode was too hard. The networking feature could never be made to work (I believe it needed some special proprietory networking hardware - Sopwith may even have originally been written in order to demonstrate this hardware). Finally, the game seemed a bit unpolished - it dumped you back to DOS when you completed it or lost all your lives.
The Bottom Line
Sopwith is a good, fast, fun action game. When playing it, you may well spend more time trying to do great stunts than actually finishing it. The fact that you can do all these great stunts (which aren't "built in" to the game, they just emerge from the way you can manouvre your plane) is probably the best thing about it.
