IL-2 Sturmovik™: 1946

Years ago, when Lucas Arts still cared about gamers, they released a title called Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. At the time it was the best World War II flight simulator to be found. Since then, I've looked for one that came close in terms of realism, variety and action, and have so often been utterly disappointed by superficial titles. IL-2 Sturmovik not only matches but surpasses all titles previous to it. The game features a steep learning curve. Those used to more arcade style simulators might have trouble dealing with torque, flutter affects and the spins that come from misusing the chosen aircraft. Once you do however, you're rewarded with an incredibly accurate experience. The planes handle realistically even when damaged, and trying to limp a damaged bomber back to base with a hole in the wing and a smoking engine is a tense experience. Each plane has its own unique handling and weapons, and you'll likely soon find a favorite among the huge array to choose from. 1946 is definitely the best bang for your buck as you get all the previous titles: Original IL-2, IL-2 Forgotten Battles, the Ace Expansion Pack, the Pacific Campaigns, The Pe-2 Campaign, the IL-10 campaign Sturmoviks over Manchuria, and the new 1946 campaign, which tells a compelling and somewhat plausible what-if story that lengthens the war for another year, and lets you play the weird and wild secret weapons that Germany and Russia came up with, including an experimental helicopter. This game lets you fly every side of the war, even the esoteric ones you've probably never heard of. You can pilot Finnish Buffaloes in the Continuation War, shoot down Hurricanes with the Imperial Japanese, pilot American dive bombers at Midway, German rocket planes and jets, and of course the titular IL-2, a heavy Soviet ground support plane that lets you rain death from above. The game does have a few flaws, but all are easily remedied. The less than realistic engine noises are fixable through a community made sound patch, and if you don't like the static campaigns, there is a dynamic campaign generator available that gives you direct control over the future of the war. Few other games have such a dedicated modding community, even years after it was released, and the amount of campaigns, missions, skins, and tweaks available for the game are staggering, perhaps matched only by the original Half Life. The long and short is, if you're a fan of flight simulators, or a history buff, this is an absolute must have.

IL-2 is a fantastic flight simulator. While many flight simulators have their strengths and weaknesses, the IL-2 series became the pinnacle of the WW2 era flight simulator genre - it has everything: a fantastic flight model, great damage modelling, many (well-modelled) aircraft to fly, and good artificial intelligence, along with great graphics and sound. It's also very approachable on the difficulty level, due to a wide range of settings, to accomodate both the newbies and the hardcore flight sim fans. No other simulator comes close these days, when you consider all those parts; IL-2 is the ultimate package for any flight simulator fan. For those who like single-player, there's plenty of options. There are pre-made missions, an assortment of (dynamic!) campaigns, and both a quick mission editor (for practing dogfights, for example) and a built-in mission editor which is very capable. The dynamic campaign engine is great, but make sure you update it with the latest version (look for further information on the game forum, I'll see if I put it there). If for some reason you don't like the missions generated by the built-in dynamic campaign engine, there are a few free third-party options available as well. It really, really shines in multiplayer. You can fly missions competitively or cooperatively, in many different maps (in missions made with the mission editor, or even dynamic campaigns), and it works beautifully, even with some moderate lag - I could play well in some servers even with a 400-500ms ping. I've played this game in multiplayer more than any other game I own (and on a 56k modem at the time), and it has always been a blast, a real exhilarating experience. All in all, this is one of the gems of the combat flight simulator genre. If you like flight sims, you probably have this game already. If you don't have it already, get it now. It doesn't get much better than this.

BUY THIS SIM, it is almost complete air-warfare of WW2 in one package, you won't regret it, and please listen to me for why you should buy it. I first played this game when it first came out, first IL-2 only featured well modelled russian IL-2 Sturmovik assault-bomber and few playable fighters. The next add-on "forgotten battles" included lot more fighters, bombers, dive bombers, assault-fighters and name forgotten battles came from the fact that what it added was campaings from sides of war you hardly ever even hear of... what do you know of Hungarian, Romanian, Polish or Finnish ww2 history? yes, they all have campaigns now. This sim can teach you a lot, and is also very VERY entertaining. The next add on to the game was "ace-expansion" which added few more planes, including first jet-fighters and few rocket-fighters which were most left into prototype phase. The NEXT addon was Pacific Fighters, which now added Pacific campaign featuring americans vs. japanese, but you can also fly with british royal airforce or australian airforce who were serving in the same theater this means again, lot of new bombers and fighters, japanese, american and british alike. and the Last add-on to the game was 1946, which is compilation of prototype airplanes which were either too hard to produce, or simply could not be finished into production until ww2 was over. It takes place in year 1946 where german was NOT defeated in 45 and continues the fight, and takes those prototype planes into the sky of berlin in few campaigns and single misions, realistic?, no... intresting? VERY... And all of these add-ons are built on to the main game, they include campaings, single missions, huge amount of flyable and realistically featured planes, and they are all in this very package. Don't get me wrong in those last lines about 1946, the game is VERY realistic, flight models are very well made, especially if you look at how many planes there are. You can feel the love that game makers have for war history and flight-combat simulators. This game does so many things right, and the graphics are decent still to this day, if I REALLY need to find something to whine about, I find the mission editor rather confusing, but I never got into it really. I just love flying :) So in overall... what you get is 5 games in one package... for 10 USD... that is a deal I have never seen before. I personally bought everyone of these games one by one, concidering also that I'm simulator gamer I could also count the joysticks and other gaming gear I've bought, I'd say I've spent more than 500 € into this... and I don't feel any regrets :) And you can get rather good "casual gamer" joystick for 30 USD, it's no problem. and the game for only 10 USD. It's a bargain to say the least. Once in a lifetime chance to get into very good simulator game, WITHOUT the financial commitment that most of "hardcore" simulator players have to go through. I've gone long enough now, go and buy the damn game. It's easily my favorite simulator of all time, and for Good Old Gamers, only for 10 USD. Don't miss this :) PS. when you start to play, go for realism from the start, if you get yourself used to "arcade" easy diffuculty, it's harder to get into realistic feeling. But if you start with realistic, you'll never go back to arcade titles :) Thank you for reading.

That's it, IL-2 Sturmovik is my first flight sim, so I don't have the experience nor the background to write a depth review. Instead, I can point out a few things that everyone who haven't played flight sims before (like me) should know about this game: - IL-2 Sturmovik is a very difficult game... if you want. Because you can turn the difficulty to "easy" and go step by step till you can do everything by yourself and fly solo. - The game features hundreds of differents planes. Plus you can easily design new skins for your favourite planes. Which leaves you with a infinite number of planes. Cool, isn't? - You can make your own missions and scenarios. Plus you have dozens of campaign missions just ready to be played. - While playing the game with a joystick is obviosly better, you can easily enjoy IL-2 Sturmovik with a good controller (I'm using a logitech dual action and works just fine). - Conclusion: don't be afraid of flight sims, try this one and you may discover a great new genre.