Reviews
For console gamers flight games are quite varied and whilst most are solid experiences they often struggle to cater to multiple audiences. See, many gamers tend to enjoy specific experiences dependent upon whether they prefer arcade style flight games, simulations or somewhere in between. This generation of consoles has already seen multiple flying games from the arcade style Blazing Angels series and Hawks, to the more hardcore Ace Combat 6. IL2’s pc release was a sim and quite a difficult one at that. It had a steep learning curve and unforgiving difficulty that could really punish those who didn’t bother to learn the controls properly. IL2’s console release still has this difficulty, however Gaijin Entertainment / 1C Company have also added 2 further difficulty levels so that the game caters for all audiences.
The arcade difficulty is easy to pick up and play with simple controls and not so realistic damage occurring to your own plane. The plane will also be more stable which is especially noticed when flying from the cockpit view when compared to other difficulties. Arcade mode also has a handy indicator that hovers in front of the enemy planes path showing where you should aim to ensure your target is hit. Arcade mode is also the easiest mode to play due to all the assists. When first playing IL2 arcade is the only difficulty unlocked with the others becoming available once the proper tutorials have been completed. The tutorial is very straightforward and easy to understand with many tutorials being presented as small missions whether it be defending an allied unit or giving chase to some enemy bombers.
Those after more of a challenge should definitely check out realistic difficulty. In realistic your plane will fly completely different to how it handles in arcade mode. If a plane is pushed beyond its capabilities such as attempting a barrel roll without enough speed or even sudden direction changes the plane will stall sending it spinning towards the ground. Once spinning it can be very difficult to level the plane out and many will find themselves eating dirt all too often initially at least on realistic. The planes also seemed to take further particle damage in this mode when compared to the arcade setting. Realistic difficulty still show enemies via targeting reticles and allows you to target enemies by the press of a button, but it does remove the easy aiming indicator. Shooting down enemy planes is also harder as the plane will now shake violently from the vibrations caused by machine gun fire.
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