I bought IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 yesterday, and it arrived today. I installed it and loaded up the control settings as I always do when I’m just getting started with a new game. I cringed slightly at the sight of all those controls, but I decided I probably didn’t need most of them since they were largely unbound.
Then I opened a list of training missions and picked the one at the top – it was about bombing. It became clear pretty quickly that I was supposed to have picked another one first, because this tutorial seemed to think I was a veteran. It tried to explain how to program a bombing sight, but I kinda went a little crosseyed – partially due to the lack of audio on the tutorial messages – and left the mission none the wiser.
Incidentally, the mission was non-interactive. Just some pre-programmed footage with text messages along the top of the screen in a garish red colour to explain things. Allow me to repeat the mantra of game tutorial designers: Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I will remember. Let me try, and I will understand.
Scrolling down the list, I found the basic flight tutorial and loaded it up. It seemed nicely straight-forward: Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw. Barrel roll, combat turn, loop. It gave me the impression that I could actually do this, so I started a carreer as a lowly Flight Sergeant for the RAF’s far east command and found myself in the cockpit of a Hurricane plane on a runway. Oops, didn’t check the take-off tutorial yet.
Well, it couldn’t be that hard. After finding the engine key in the control menu, I started up my plane and carefully increased the throttle until I started moving – into another plane in front of me, which I had not seen because the nose of my plane was pointing slightly upwards. Crash, boom, mission failed.
Deciding that carreer mode can wait, I found a sample stand-alone RAF mission where I was tasked to shoot down a V1 rocket. It started me in the air, mercifully, but trying to turn 90 degrees towards where I thought my target might be, I immediately crashed my plane into the ocean. Took me a few deaths to figure out that playing with a keyboard, I have to tap the keys instead of holding them down or it’ll oversteer quite phenomenally. Once I’d managed to actually turn my plane around without stalling, I tried to do a loop… and crashed again.
And that’s my experience with IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 so far. It’d doubtlessly be a lot easier and more fun if I had a joystick, but I’m not super happy with the thought of paying $100 for a joystick for one game, so I’ll have to wait until I can borrow a joystick from a friend.
LOL – that’s just fantastic.
Reminds me of one of the old Apache helicopter games i once played (i used to be a flightsim buff….).
The tutorial was mandatory to gain access to the rest of the game…. and the first 5 tutorials where almost non-interactive. The first one started out with you sitting in the helicopter with your instructor, who then talked….and talked….and then talked some more…..and then talked…until FINALLY you would get to turn on the engine and then turn it off again….. the same procedure carried on through the first tutorials where you would learn to take of, move forward, land, and fire your guns….. then the tutorials became a bit more interactive. The main problem was that each tutorial took about 20-30 minutes to complete…..so that was 20 minutes of listening to some voice actor blabber on about how great an Apache helicopter is…… the worst thing though, is that I actually sat through it all…..
I’d really love to play a good chopper game again. I love helicopters for some reason, but I’m not interested in learning to fly one just to play a game. I’d like a simplified helicopter sim, more like a chopper action game really, like my old favourite ThunderBird 2. Unfortunately they don’t seem to make a lot of chopper games anymore, only stupid flash arcade games or really hard-core helicopter simulators.
I enjoyed flying chopper missions in ARMA =)
Hm yeah that’s kept coming up in my search for more accessible flight simulation. It just seems excessively strange to me to buy what’s essentially a “soldier sim” in order to get to fly a helicopter. Is it possible to play the helicopter missions without having to play other types of missions, like infantry or armour?
A few days ago, I compiled a list of games I need to check out when my new joystick arrives. These were the most recent mainstream aviation games I could find:
Operation Air Assault (2006)
Yager (2003)
Gunship (2000)
I’ll also see about completing Darkstar One, and I just bought Freespace 2.
You could play the helicopter missions separately, but only after you completed those missions. I think it had a sim mode, but don’t take me for granted, cause I was on the dark side.
I was thinking of reccomending Lock On: Modern Air Combat… I enjoyed mastering and plaing A-10 bomber course, while learning an F-15 was kinda heavy, well figuring the keyboard command for locking one, multiple targets…. =)
i found this googling: http://www.hovercontrol.com/hcc2_showcase.shtml
they are helicopter simulators, and just that, you don’t save the world, i think.
Yeah I tracked down Lock On myself, gotta try that out some time. Dunno how long Freespace 2 will last me. I’m about to try IL-2 with joystick for the first time, wish me luck.
Good Lick, and God Speed