Developed by:
UBI-soft
I will admit that while I was eagerly awaiting this game I was
rather skeptical. I've played a number of World War II flight sims
and felt this one had a lot of work to do in order to measure up,
but measure up it did. For starters, it is a novelty in that it is
set on the often ignored Eastern Front during the Second World War.
You can fly either for the Soviets or for the Germans and, if you
choose Soviet side, can select from two distinct career paths,
bomber pilot or figther pilot (you are restricted to fighter pilot
in the German setting). As a bomber pilot you will receive
missions that require you to destroy an assortment of ground based
targets. These can range from simple vehicle convoys composed of
lightly armored trucks that can be taken out in a single good
strafing run to panzer formations that will require some good
gunnery and a bit of luck to destroy. There will also be times
when you will be called upon to blow up bridges to impede the
advance of the German forces. For these missions you will be
flying variants of the IL-2, namesake of this game. Many times you
will find angry AI fighters on your tail and for once the AI
pilots (and, for that matter, AI anti-aircraft gunners on the
ground) are actually quite competent. The IL-2 is capable of
soaking up a tremendous amount of damage but that is little
defense against a Bf-109 on your tail. That said, the damage
models are outstanding, they range from only a few bullet holes to
massive tears in the wings and shredding of one's control surfaces.
Also, this damage can affect your cocpit environment, your
crosshair may be broken or the glass of the windshield so obsured
thanks to cracking that you can barely see out of it. Blackouts,
redouts, and the rare lucky shot are also very real dangers,
though rare, it is not unheard of for the AI to get lucky and put
a shot right through the windscreen and, consequently, the pilot's
head. One neat feature I haven't seen in many other combat flight
simulators is the ability to take up the position of the rear
gunner (once you get to the later IL-2 varients which had a rear
gunner). The AI can do a remarkably good job of piloting the plane
for you and trying to keep the plane's tail clear of enemy
fighters while the AI does this is rather challenging, also, the
rear gunner can be wounded or even killed by enemy fire, thus
depriving you of that defense.
One thing that I feel helps make this game accessible to a wide
audience is the variety of options that can be altered, one can go
for hard-core realism settings or turn off most settings so that
it has an almost arcade-ish feel to it or set it to any range of
different combinations. As an example, turning on realistic
gunnery means your bullets will drop and be subject to all manner
of other interference whereas turning it off doubles the damage
your shots do and makes them travel in a straight line. Turning
off blackouts and redouts removes those potential hazards from the
game whereas leaving them on means that if you are not careful you
may well pass out if you push too hard (and hence be easy meat for
the enemy). The only complaint I have here is that once you set
those options for a particular pilot, they cannot be changed later
on. Hopefully this problem will be remedied in a patch some time
soon.
Although the missions are by no means historically accurate
portrails of any missions actually flown by real pilots of the
time, they are quite fun in that they take place during historical
events (the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk for one) and often
give the player a feeling of actually making a difference.
Lastly, the graphics. Although I have seen better graphics,
this game is still no slouch in that department. All of the
aircraft are very well detailed and all of the ground units are as
well, one nice touch I haven't before seen is that infantry will
run from their vehicles if they see you making a strafing run. The
landscape could use a bit of work as the trees look terrible from
low altitude, but overall the landscape graphics are actually
quite good (particularly water). The clouds are the most realistic
looking I have seen in a flight sim.
My only real complaint is there seems to be a memory leak
somewhere in the game as it will occasionally suffer from a
drastic stuttering and slowdown-effect that only worsens with
time, this seems to occur after about five missions or so. If one
quits and then starts the game back up again this problem seems to
disappear for a time, hopefully this will be addressed in a future
patch.
All things considered, this game is well worth the money and
should keep you entertained for hours. Finally, an excellent
flight sim that does justice to the so often overlooked Eastern
Front.
