IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

IL-2 Sturmovik is a well-crafted, and impressively executed flight sim. While the option of an arcade difficulty is included in the game and makes it slightly more accessible to the Crimson Skies/Blazing Angels crowd, the game is definitely geared toward those who like their flight games as realistic as possible. The plane selection is excellent, with a good variety of Axis (German) and Allied (British, Russian, and US) birds available to use. The planes handle very well, and based on the input of a real-life pilot I am friends with, pretty accurately. There have been some reviews complaining about "jerkiness" in the planes, but that is a characteristic of the era. With a decent mission variety, and a decent story, the game pulls you through the campaign, although you won't be hanging on every word in the cutscenes. If you enjoy cutthroat dogfighting, and WWII period aircraft, this is definitely a strong contender. I would recommend that any serious ace consider getting a flight-stick, as it greatly improves the experience.

Their is nothing like getting into a realistic type game and it actually being realistic! Get behind your favorite WW-II plane, mine being the liquid-cooled supercharged V-12, 1,490 hp, North American P-51 Mustang D up against the Luftwaffe it a all out dog fight over the battle of the bulge! Now the game has a lot of good things about it, if you're into realistic games, but it also has the basic arcade future.

Arcade - You know you're basic controls, can do un-realistic stuff such as climb as much altitude as the game will let you, turn on a dime, recover from a stall faster, unlimited ammo/fuel and just basic things like that.

Realistic - It's slightly harder, controls a little more shakey but not all that bad to get used to, you won't be able to turn as quickly with out stalling, stalling spins your plane out of control and must get control back, and you have a option for unlimited ammo/fuel or limited.

Simulator - Is that hardest and probably should have been called "Realistic". I have not learned this mode yet but I practice from time to time. It's always in the cockpit view, no radar, no target indicator, you stall very easily even in a slight turn or climb. But I am determined to get the hang of this game.

I can not judge on online elements because of my current situation of where I live, for this I am sorry.

The story line takes you from Battle of Briton, the skies over Stalingrad and back over Berlin. Their is single mission, this is more of what it would it would be like to be a real pilot. You don't always go fill the sky with with lead but perform tasks but most of the time it's attacking but sometimes you get to do other things. For Example, on the Battle of Briton their is one where you have returned from a bombing and you just have to fly to the air field, but another is you defend against a bunch of Stuka Dive Bombers.

I give it a 9/10 because it didn't it didn't have a high resolution cut scenes, it just has game graphics, which is still good!