Birds of steel

Official Site: http://www.birdsofsteel.com/
Developer: Gaijin Entertainment
try demo here



A few years ago, Gaijin Entertainment surprised many gamers with a title that came out of the blue, a decent flight simulator for games consoles. IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey gave gamers a realistic flight simulation. Now, three years later, Konami brings gamers back to World War II, we again get to take the controls of a fighter and fight in the skies of the Pacific, where we relive the most exciting and dangerous air and naval battles in history.


Gameplay: Absolutely amazing flight model and physics engine for a console game. It can be a beast just trying to take off and keep your plane in the air, but so rewarding. Actually pulling off a carrier landing in a thunderstorm with high wind on simulation setting is about as difficult as anything in gaming, but man does it feel good to do. The AI is quite good, except for the occasional collision between friendlies. It does feel like you are fighting other gamers in the dogfights though. The physics engine just really makes the combat stand out. Being able to pick apart pieces of your enemy’s plane just feels right. Blowing a hole in their fuselage and seeing your screen go black as it coats with oil is a great touch. Watching pilots bail out as there plane breaks to pieces and explodes in a fireball just never gets old. The developers model everything down to the smallest detail. Take a dive too fast with your landing gear out, and you may see a wheel or two rip off. The difficulty modes give great variety for every type of player, but this game is fairly challenging no matter what setting. Simplified makes it impossible to stall and the flight are pretty much easier. You still have to control things like landing gear though. Realistic cranks up the difficulty and adds stalls and spins. Simulation is for the hard-core only. It adds propeller flutter, black outs, red outs, removes the HUD. And makes just shooting down any enemy feel like a grand achievement. The best part is that you can also use the "custom" difficulty level that allows you to tweak everything form plane damage, to the HUD, to the flight model. There are also a ton of modes to play with. Main campaigns, online, dynamic campaigns, solo missions, and even creates your own mission modes. There are even encyclopaedia’s for history buffs, a hangar to view all the planes in detail (and paint them), and even a replay mode that lets you replay the whole mission with different camera angles and speeds and save it! There is also great pacing with the unlocking of content within the game. Play everything on easy mode, and it will take a while to unlock the dozens of planes, but crank it up and although it is MUCH harder, you will see huge rewards for completing missions. I just can't get over the amount of content packed into this game.


Graphics: The landscapes, water, sky, clouds, lighting, and everything in the environment look stunning. The ground even looks good up close, which is more than most flight games can claim. It is great to see the details like crewmen running around working on the carriers while you are taking off and landing. The planes themselves are the stars here though, and they do not disappoint. Each one is designed with full destructibility and moving parts. I believe there are over 100 planes, and they all look amazing. You can also change paint jobs/decals and weapon load outs, once you unlock them. The planes themselves are richly detailed, and the cockpits in particular have been lavished with attention.

Sound: To be fair, it couldn't be much better. The music is all classical music similar to the scores on battle of Britain or battle of the bulge and other movies of the genre which suits this well. The combat sounds are breath taking though. From the booms of shells going off near your plane, to the hum of the propeller, to the wheel squeaks and wind rattles while landing, to the wind buffeting and pulling at the rivets as you stall and go into a nose dive, everything here is tip top.
Lasting appeal: Pacific War campaign as both USA and Japan, a mission editor, extensive public multiplayer and co-op modes are all here to add excellent value for money.

Achievements: 95% of them are relatively easy. You typically earn an achievement for each ‘round of conflict’, (example: All Pearl Harbour missions, all The Battle of Midway missions) with an additional achievement available permission for passing certain criteria, or amassing a certain number of kills. There are a couple which require play on the higher difficulty levels, but apparently you can customize your settings to help it play easier and the cheevs still pop, happy days! Even the multiplayer ones are fairly simple. I have no doubt that this is definitely a completion to be had no to mention a bloody fun one.


The best flight sim to ever grace a game console?
Well I won’t argue with that 9/10