IL 2 STURMOVIK 1946 CHANGE RESOLUTION SERIES

Either way, IL-2 1946 remains the best version of (currently) the best World War 2 flight sim ever created. If you're anything more than that, or if you've ever set foot in a flight sim fan forum, or you've already bought this and have arrived here out of some sense of pedantic duty, then you should find any errors in our spelling of obscure German aircraft, scoff and move on.

IL 2 STURMOVIK 1946 CHANGE RESOLUTION SERIES

If it's the case that you occasionally dabble in the simulation of flight, perhaps while the wife's out shopping and the kids are at school - maybe you even own a joystick - then IL-2 1946 is the most comprehensive repackaging of the original that the series has seen, and comes highly recommended. So when it comes to deciding whether or not this is a game you want to play, it becomes a matter of who you are and why you're reading this review. Pull your head out of the flight sim closet and of course you'll find inherent genre problems which ward off curious newcomers - unpolished menu systems, under-explained game mechanics and extreme difficulty for those who don't know what they're doing, it's par for the course really. It rounds off IL-2's reign as flight sim champion, before that crown is potentially passed on to its successor, Storm of War: Battle of Britain. As a complete package however, IL-2 1946 acts as a nice bookend for the series. Other aircraft are considerably less surreal yet still dance proudly in the 'what if' arena of war, with jet planes and wire-guided missiles providing more alternate future food for thought, while a smattering of more down-to-earth fighter planes form the expansion's more solid and reliable content. It sports vertical take-off and landing capabilities (this was 1946 remember, so that's really special), and even though the machine the Nazis designed wouldn't have flown, Oleg Maddox and his team have tweaked it enough to create a flyable plane - one of 32 new flyable planes in fact. This machine, essentially the butt of a joke involving a helicopter designer and an aeroplane designer crashing into one another on the way to the office, is an actual honest-to-god Luftwaffe creation.

Again, something else which flight sim enthusiasts will view in the same way that we'd view a man giving birth to a horse, is the inclusion of the prototype Lerche contraption mentioned in the previous paragraph. Trust us when we say that such things tend to blow flight sim fans' minds, either driving purists insane with rage or causing them to roll around on the floor writhing with glee. That's something that didn't actually happen, you may have noticed, as that particular campaign takes place along an alternate timeline. The 46 static campaign is clearly of most interest to fans of the series, one series of missions putting you in the pilot cap of one Hauptmann Schlammer, offering you the chance to assist in the assassination of Hitler. And yes, that includes the prototype Heinkel He-L-IIIB-2 Lerche, so you can put your hands down now. The most noticable aspects of the new content revolves around the inclusion of some late entries to the battlefield. It also contains three new expansions of its own: PE-2, Sturmoviks Over Manchuria, and 46 (after which the collection is half-named, confusingly) - all mercifully merged into a single installation. IL-2 1946 is a collection of all things IL-2 up until this point in time: every add-on, every campaign and every plane, over 300 of the things by the last count. So what the hell, you might be thinking, is IL-2 1946? Throughout its lifespan, IL-2 spawned many expansions, some stand-alone and some not, creating a family tree as complex and confounding as that of a gypsy. It's always been a joy to play for closeted and hardcore flight simmers alike, and, as its friends no doubt drunkenly state in its absence, it's an all-round great game who'd never steer you wrong. It's renowned for realism so unforgiving that it would totally hold a grudge forever if you just bumped into it on the tube by accident one time, for the sort of comprehensiveness that makes those really thick dictionaries look pamphlet-like in stature, and for thoroughly exposing the oft-ignored Russian side of the war. Alongside Lock On 4.0 and Microsoft Flight Sim, it forms the highly-successful third pillar in the 'let's pretend we're flying' triptych.

IL-2 Sturmovik is a series which has been running (or flying, if you must) for around half a decade now. So what the hell happened to all of the World War II planes? Because, according to the latest expansion pack for Oleg Maddox's inescapably excellent combat flight sim, 1946 was positively teeming with them. The sandwich you had for lunch becomes a monument to our civilisation, and the chair you sit on becomes a much, much older chair, for people who live in the future. The future, they say, is filled with the relics of today.

Il 2 sturmovik 1946 change resolution