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| Source // PlayStation |
It's a name you can't really forget, IL-2 Sturmovik. Who names a flight sim after a Soviet fighter plane anyway? Worked, though, I suppose. What better name could there be for a hardcore military simulator set in the skies of the Second World War than the harsh sounds of 'Sturmovik'?
A couple of years since I played IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 for this 1001 list (where I saw absolutely nothing of interest across multiple missions, then usually crashed), we've been told that the consoles also have a historic hardcore flight simulator worth checking out in the form of IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey.
Even that sounds friendlier and more welcoming, doesn't it? Birds of Prey. We like birds. Will we manage to fly them, though? Will we actually see some action?
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Fun Times
I'm playing Birds of Prey on the PlayStation 3, and it has the distinction of being the only disc-based game I have in this binder beginning with 'I', but that doesn't tell you anything about what it is, now, does it?
Birds of Prey starts off with a tutorial above the White Cliffs of Dover, for once shining bright in the sun. We're learning the ropes in a Spitfire, and here's the first thing that this game does to welcome newcomers to flight sims: it doesn't feature motion controls.
This was an era where Warhawk would have us swing and twist our arms around to control a plane, but here it's the more traditional thumbsticks that do all the work. Throttle up, roll, pull back, roll out, boom, you're turning. Piece of cake, even f you're not quite as smooth as the professionals.
Stick around through all of the tutorials and you'll eventually unlock the daunting 'Realistic' and 'Simulator' modes of both control and gameplay. The easy mode is considered to be an 'Arcade' kind of flight sim, with unlimited retries if (and when) you fail. Given the nature of trying to port an entire flight sim to a controller, I'm going to avoid those difficulties entirely and see how I fare with the easy stuff.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
The campaign takes the form of a handful of missions in a given airspace, such as Dover or Italy, where you'll fly an Allied plane, usually with wingmen to issue orders to, towards a given main objective.
It couldn't be easier on Easy mode to know what you're doing. A radar blips with friend and foe, marked targets and objectives, and the screen is full of indicators telling you exactly what that fuzzy spec in the distance is, though it's unlikely you'll know any of the designators unless you're a historical aviation fan. If it's red, it's not friendly, easy.
If you're tasked with taking down some aerial targets, you can mark one out with a press of the X button and then press and hold the L2 button to lock your camera onto them, so that you can both fly around and keep track of them in what turns out to be some rather lovely looking gameplay - so long as the frame rate can cope, which it often can't.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
Shooting down your target is aided by an indicator telling you where you lead your shots to account for the various differences in speed and angle and so on, with a little picture-in-picture preview of how close you are to your target.
On this easy mode, the R2 button can be held down for pretty much as long as you like without fear of running out of ammo, though overheating will eventually be a problem for you. In reality, of course, you'd be bursting, missing, and flying home with no kills, but as in real life, if you tear a wing to shreds or punch holes into engines, a plane will be out of action instantly, spiralling to the ground or blowing up in the clouds.
That goes for you, too. If you get a bogey on your tail and don't do anything about it, it can be a literal second before you're out of the action. On Easy mode, you can respawn back in, appearing pretty much where you were in the mission when you were shot with no problems whatsoever, and it takes just a few seconds.
I know this because when I found out the campaign was short and retries were infinite, I got my flight helmet on (or whatever passed for a helmet in the 1940s) and got stuck in.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
Frustrations
It wasn't all plain sailing. The missions that had you piloting bombers had easy controls to hit ground targets with both bombs and missiles, and had a rear gunner that you could switch to so that you could fend off incoming fighters trying to shoot you down, but the accuracy of both bombs and gunners wasn't brilliant.
Okay, my accuracy being better would have helped, yes, but the camera isn't always your friend on bombing runs, and the PIP camera showing you where your bombs fell gives you no real idea of where you hit at all, unless you're aiming for a ship and it happens to be in that view with a near miss.
Your wingmen can be given orders to remain in formation, attack a specific target, focus on the objective or defend you from threats. If your objective is to bomb something, your wingmen are useless in helping you bomb, and not much better in defending you. With infinite respawns, why worry about incoming threats?
In the skies, though, you can see them engage in dogfights, screaming their status over the radio in their native tongue, and you can watch how effective working together is when you're chasing down a target, only to see someone with a better angle blowing them out of the sky before you get there.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Fun Times
When everything comes together, Birds of Prey looks absolutely fantastic. The cockpit view is lovely, not that I ever used it, and there is the option for swivelling the camera around your plane to get a look around you, though this requires you to press R3 and then move the right thumbstick, so get used to the camera recentering itself because you dared to try and look elsewhere.
These screenshots are rather cinematic, and the game can reach those heights, but if you fly straight into a pack of enemy fighters, everyone shooting at everyone else and you're locked onto one of them using the targeting camera, be prepared for a slideshow frame rate at it tries to display all the action.
Thankfully, a quick tap of L2 to let it settle on something else usually gives it enough time to get back on track, and by that point the pack have broken up and you can successfully focus on a single enemy, plucked out from all your possible targets.
Also worth noting is the damage model, where your wings can be peppered with holes, smoke starting to pour out of who-knows-what, but you can keep flying - unless the damage is terminal, of course.
I learned the campaign was short, at around 5 hours, but when you play it, you also learn how much control you have over its length. From time to time, you might hear a secondary objective come through on the radio and you're given a choice to accept it or not. Hit yes and you've got more to do, hit no and you can carry on with your main objective.
When that main objective has been completed, the mission will end but will always give you an option of carrying on and ticking off some side objectives, such as finishing off the remaining enemy fighters. If you want more fighting, carry on past the mission complete indicator. If you want to progress through the story, don't. Simple.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
That story follows a handful of missions across the skies of the Second World War, always as the Allied forces, and accompanied by archival footage, a narrator setting the scene, and ending with spoken letters from pilots that fought in those battles.
I wasn't swept up in the story at all, really, and the letters did little more than to remind me how human everyone is, even during a war. Birds of Prey is focused on flying more than anything, and it does that rather well indeed.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Final Word
My experience of Birds of Prey was in some sense the complete opposite of that of IL-2 Sturmovik. I had not only completed the game (at its most basic, easiest level), but I had experienced all the thrills without the tedium of reality getting in the way.
I think both games are great for what they try to present to players, and if you've an interest in the Second World War and aviation, you'll be pleased with either game. If you can't get into the hardcore nature of the original, though, or want to work your way up to it, this action-centric adaptation is probably your starting point.
Having died 15 times in quick succession on the final mission, I know I'm thankful for an easy mode that allows me to enjoy the game. Knowing there are two more control methods beyond that that both alter the difficulty of the game to frankly scary-sounding levels is something to admire once more.
Even then, Birds of Prey on a controller won't compare to IL-2 Sturmovik with a flight stick, but if accessibility and fun are essential to you, it's here where you ought to look.
Fun Facts
Handheld versions of Birds of Prey exist, though at some point you just need to ask "How far is too far?" when it comes to dumbing down a control scheme.
IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, developed by Gaijin Entertainment, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2009.