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Why-ee-ayeee-ayee Superman’s dead

For all its technical advancement and quality execution, the dynamic campaign lacks soul. Precisely the problem that CFS3 was trying to solve hasn’t even been touched on by Il-2: Forgotten Battles. There is no feel, no sense of involvement or advancement. Missions may as well be completely unconnected to each other. While it would take nothing less than a real artificial intelligence to truly connect the campaign of random missions and let the player interact with his squadron mates, this should not have stopped the developers from attempting to throw in some atmosphere. As it stands, the campaigns are nothing but random missions that happen to occur in the same time period and area. Supposedly the player’s actions have consequences in the game world, but these are transparent and difficult to spot. Shot down entire flights of Bf-110Cs in several missions? In that case they’re supposed to become rarer, but this is difficult to notice.

Funk soul brother check it out now

Yeeesh

Run forrest run

The campaign is technically sound, but not perfect. There are no missions where the player’s flight or bombing squadron manages to get the jump on an enemy ground target. It may be boring to encounter no or little opposition during a mission, but at least it would throw in some variety. At the moment, the player’s squadron always finds itself with Wing Commander-like odds, 4 against 16, 8 against 20! So much for realism.

Silicone intelligence

The Il-2 AI, a sore spot with the first game, may have improved somewhat but is still lacking. Computer aircraft are immune to spins, resistant to stalls and seem to have boundless energy. They always know where the player is – no matter the clouds, bad weather or night. Enemy gunners on the rear of light bombers and heavy fighters like the Bf-110 or Il-2 are deadly accurate, completely unfazed by the evasive maneuvers of the aircraft they are in. It’s one thing to be a marksman gunner from a stable platform like a Pe-8, it’s another to do so while engaging in a barrel-roll followed by a hard rolling break and dive. The occasional lucky shot that disables an engine or kills the pilot is understandable, but an uninterrupted laser-like stream of hot lead is another matter. Gunners miss and often, but in a very artificial fashion – always leading the player wrong, never quite correcting.

Messerchmitts!

My elevators are fooked

Too many close hits

The AI seems to have picked up on tactics in between versions. It has proven capable of rudimentary judgment of altitude/energy advantages, though it still doesn’t seem to understand the capabilities of its aircraft and that of its opponent. An AI pilot will just as gladly dive away from the player whether or not it has the better diving aircraft. Its understanding of firepower disadvantages is nonexistent; a Hurricane Mk I with .303cal ‘paint stripper’ machine guns will fearlessly play chicken against the heavily-armed Il-2 rather than use its speed and maneuverability to gain position. AI choice of targets remains poor, pilots will come up behind bomber formations and target the lead aircraft (thus subjecting themselves to defensive fire from all other bombers.) In fact, AI planes tend to settle all-too-readily for coming up behind bombers which tends to be a poor idea even in the best of circumstances.