I have played many flight sims over my roughly 25 plus computer gaming career. Have played the early versions of Sub Logics Flight Sim to MS FSX. IL-2 Strumovik: 1946 has to be the current king of the hill. 1946 is actually a compliation of all previous IL-2 games AND adds the planes that were on the drawing boards of the major powers of WW2. It does this over maps of Europe, Russia, and the Pacific. You can fly single missions or entire campaigns. The flight modeling is excellent. The combat damage is the most realistic I have seen to date. Those that play muli-player will be rewarded by many excellent features in game. For one, you can fly on the same team in the SAME plane if the plane is mult-crewed. So, you and a friend can jump into say an A-20 or the IL-2 and while one pilots the other can fight off those pesky fighters dogging your tail. If you are the gunner, you can feel the terror of realising your pilot has bailed as you dive earthward in a shot up craft. As the pilot, you can scream at your gunner to get the boggeis shooting up your tail. For those that like the more "modern" era there are planes to fly like the Me-163 German rocket plane. Or the Me-262 the world's first operational combat jet fighter. Plus, there are planes you can fly that never actually made it into the war. This include a German push-pull prop driven fighter; a Russian jet that was a precursor to the Mig-15 and 17; and the XF-80 US jet fighter which later became operational as the X-80 Shooting Star. And for those that like to make there own senario's there is an editor included with the game. You want to create a senario where British Mosquito's go on the prowl over pre-invasion Normday? You can whip up this senario in less then 20 minutes. You want to jump into a flight of Me-163 rocket planes and shoot down incoming B-17's? No problem with this editor. In fact, using the editor gives you some ideas just how powerful this game can be. Not only can you make senarios but you can make complete campaigns. Although the campaigns are somewhat scripted, they can be very interesting.
On the downside, remapping controls in the game are both easy and frustrating. You can remap simply by clicking the desired function and pressing a key. But, some things like weapon assignments are extremely confusing. Instead of stating "machine guns" or "bombs" the game calls these "weapon 1" or "weapon 2" and so on. And, each plane may have different weapons assigned to the same game function. So, on one plane bombs may be assigned to "weapon 2" while on the next plane "weapon 2" might be the wing machine guns. Overall, even with the remapping issues, 1946 is a must have for any serious flight simmer.
Oleg and the boys at UbiSoft are saying that this is the last add-on/update for the venerable IL2 Sturmovik line. If this is so then they couldn't have picked a better way to go out. After the semi-disaster that was the... Read Full Review
One minute you are cursing the plane in your nuber pants because you crashed on take off as you have no understanding of much a prop can pull, the next you are finishing your 1 billionth hour online with your custom skin... Read Full Review
