"A slow-paced game for people who enjoy falling asleep in front of their computer"

This game is touted for its realism, but the reality of war is that you spend most of your time bored and a little bit of your time completely terrified. This game is like that, only not exciting. Getting places takes too much time, even with the 8x speed option, and often the action is over in a few seconds, especially if you have limited ammo.


Graphics 8/10
The graphics are actually rather good. The first person view is extremely detailed, with all of the internal gauges being useful. You can look around and have what is probably a pretty accurate rendition of what it was really like to sit in those planes.

The planes themselves look good as well, even up close. They are very detailed, and even have random wires sticking out. The cities look good at high altitude, although if you get close, things on the ground sort of look blocky and polygonal. From afar, planes look sort of pixelated as well, but that doesn't really have a technological solution. Trees just look like puffy grass.

What annoys me about the graphics is that there's always a lot of glare from the sun, and also the difficulty in aiming when you're not flying in first-person mode. I prefer to fly in third person so I can see my surroundings, and it is pretty much impossible to aim because there's no reticule and the distances are rather large.


Sound 6/10
The sound is a bit weak. You'd think that firing large-caliber guns would result in a booming sound, but it still sounds like a toy gun firing. The music that they play during the intro is really annoying, it sounds like one song with a lot of trumpets is being played three times simultaneously, but with a small time difference so that it seems like it's playing round. There is no music in-game, which is realistic. Only a radio operator who shouts at you, in German or Russian if you happen to be flying those planes. Sometimes they yell random stuff and you can't understand.

The engines sound rather nice, and different engines seem to have different sounds.


Gameplay 0/10
The game is slow. Really, really slow. It takes forever to get to where you want to go, and you don't even know how to get there because there's no radar or anything to point you in the right direction. And even if you finish your objective you don't really know how to get back, making bailing out every mission and hope that you land in friendly territory an increasingly attractive action.

Spending ten minutes straight flying and then being done with combat without firing a shot because your allies destroyed the objective may happen in real life, but in a game, it's just not worth playing. That sort of hits the nail on the head: there is no point to playing this game. It's not fun at all, and you don't have any sense of achievement. Minesweeper is better in both regards.

You can put the plane on autopilot if you don't feel like doing all the gruntwork, but if you then put it on 8x speed, you won't react fast enough when AA fire rips your plane to shreds before you even look up to pay attention. You can pretty much just set the game on autopilot and go out, and when you come back, the mission will have failed because the autopilot can't pilot very well. He won't dodge enemy fighters or run away when he's outnumbered. And he often can't adjust for engine damage well and will fly into the ground without warning.


Control 0/10
The controls are terrible unless you go out and buy a joystick and rudder pedals. It is entirely with the keyboard, the mouse just moves the camera, and you can't change the mouse. The control is also realistic for the planes. Which means that you will stall a lot because planes weren't meant to be controlled by keyboards. With a joystick, the amount of turn can be graded depending on how far you move the joystick. With a keyboard, it's just an on/off distinction.


Storyline
There is no story. Just random missions. There is a "dynamic campaign" where it randomly generates missions each day, but it's just short mission briefings.


Multiplayer
The only people left on multiplayer are people who really love this game, really a scary amount. I didn't like this game, so they kind of creep me out, but maybe they'll be your kind of people.


Conclusion 1/10
This game is rated highly by many different sources, but their metrics rate this game as a flight simulation, not against other games. I don't play very many flight sims, but against other games, this one is just terrible. I'm sure that it's realistic and all, but it just doesn't get my adrenaline pumping or anything that I expect from a game that has weapons in it. Don't buy it, don't rent it, avoid the entire series completely if you don't want to be bored to tears.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/08

Game Release: IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 (US, 03/13/07)