IL2 Sturmovik 1946: Review and LOLs.

"oh NO!"

We all burst out laughing, having been witness to one of the funniest sights in gaming. What game are we playing? TF2? Nope. GTA? Nope. We were playing IL2, a super realistic flight simulation first released in 2001 and now available in a bundle with all of its expansions for just £15.

The source of the comedy was my slightly useless flying. After stalling horribly I bailed out, only for the plane to fall on my pilot as he fell, causing it to split in two and explode. (The plane that is, not the pilot, who fell quickly to the ground, dead.) Another time Sithy and I attempted to take off on an aircraft carrier. Both our planes went straight into the sea and got promptly run over by the carrier. Again we were both doubled up laughing for many minutes afterwards.

In a vague attempt to make this a serious review I will refrain from providing any more examples of multiplayer hilarity, but suffice to say there are many, such as whe.. no, no. I mustn't. Back to serious reviewing. For your £15 you get IL2, the original Russian front flight sim released in 2001 and all its expansions/sequels: Forgotten Battles, Forgotten Battles Aces and Pacific Fighters, which add up to make what is quite possibly the largest flight sim in the known world. The reason for the name IL2: 1946 is that the pack also hypothetically extends WWII into 1946, allowing the inclusion of some incredible jets, and one crazy VTOL rocket/fan thing, making a total of well over 200 planes. Obviously most of them aren't flyable but those that are are all beautifully modelled, complete with fully 3D cockpits.

Ah, those cockpits. There is something to be said for a full 360^o field of view. As well as being spectacular it increases the immersion tenfold, allowing you to nervously peer around the slightly sparse but acceptable environments when the message "enemies spotted: 11 o'clock high" inevitably flashes onto your screen. It also allows your mean friends to flick your view down with a crafty mouse movement when you're in the middle of a dogfight. I'm looking at you, Dulls. If there is one quibble I have about the graphics it's the lack of an anti-aliasing option (fixed with hardware profiles) and the slightly short draw distance. It would have been nice to have an option to extend it beyond the still fairly close maximum currently available.

So far I've mainly talked about the multiplayer modes but do not take that to mean that the SP of the game is anything less than a credit to it. If you want to jump straight into some dog fighting action then you can, thanks to an instant action mode comparable to the "Quick Combat" on Microsoft's slightly crap Combat Flight Simulator. If you have a little more patience and are able to actually take off then you can try a single mission, typically taking half an hour and tasking you with flying somewhere, killing something and getting back again. There is also a campaign mode where you select your air force and are given missions as you go along. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed by the campaign mode. It lacked the feeling of immersion that is present in dynamic campaigns of other Sims. For example in Red Baron you were also given random missions to undertake but if your pilot died during one then you were out. Similarly if he was injured or crashed you'd spend a bit of time in hospital. If IL2's campaign had these features it would truly excel, as it is you can just retry missions if you die which means that the campaign is little more than a stream of single missions.

Still, the small issues I have with the game are totally eclipsed by the wonderful flight model, the hilarious multiplayer and the dogged dedication to realism that really makes this game shine like the brylcreamed hair of a WWII ace. Highly recommended.

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