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Il-2 Sturmovik: Difference between revisions
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''IL-2 Sturmovik'' is a [[World War Two]] [[Simulation Game|Combat Flight Simulator]] for the PC. It was originally started by Russian game developer Oleg Maddox as a hobby garage project featuring the famous Soviet [[Ensemble Darkhorse|ground attack plane]], which also lent the game its name. [[Artifact Title|It was kept even after the game got heavily expanded and commercially released]], [[Cash Cow Franchise|spawning this juggernaut of a series shortly afterward.]] The branding has stuck to the point where the formerly-titled sequel ''Storm of War: Battle of Britain'' [[Market-Based Title|is now]] ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover''.
The game, along with its 3 main sequels and numerous expansion packs, features literally hundreds of planes (most of them flyable), dozens of detailed gameplay maps in every possible theater of the war and also the opportunity to fly as some of the less famous Axis and Allied powers (e. g. [[Finland]], [[The Netherlands]], [[Romania]], [[Hungary]], [[Slovakia]], [[Australia (
The difficulty and accuracy of the flight mechanics are extremely scalable, making the game accessible to [[Hard Core|pros]] and amateurs alike. You can [http://www.ch-hangar.com/SiteFiles/Images/il2settings.jpg easily customize the difficulty and realism] of flight and air combat, turning the game either into a semi-realistic arcade dogfighter or a punishingly realistic [[Nintendo Hard]] flight sim. The game also offers a lot of freedom for creating custom missions and campaigns in it's simple and intuitive [[Level Editor]], and is generally opened to adding player-created custom content (including the possibility to add your own skins for the various aircraft or new music and sound files into the game). There's a giant fan community and tons of [[Game Mod|game mods]] in addition to the official releases. It's no secret that part of the series' success lay in a dedicated modding community worldwide. A large part of the original modder projects even became official parts of the later sequels.
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* ''IL-2 Sturmovik (2001)'': The original that started it all. Universally praised by both critics and gamers, it's often credited with resurrecting and revolutionizing the whole combat flight sim genre.
* ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (2003)'': The first stand-alone sequel, formerly announced as a mere expansion pack. Focuses mainly on less cited aerial theatres (e.g. skirmishes between the Finnish and Soviet air forces during the Winter War and Continuation War).
* ''Forgotten Battles: Ace Expansion Pack (2004)'': The first expansion pack, which added several new nations and lots of other additional content to the first two games.
* ''Forgotten Battles: Gold Pack (2004)'': Another expansion.
* ''Pacific Fighters (2004)'': The one [[Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo]], adding aircraft carriers and focusing chiefly on the Pacific theatre in all its entirety.
* ''IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 (2006)'': The last main installment in the original series, featuring the aforementioned [[Alternate History]] elements.
* ''Sturmoviks over Manchuria (2007)'': A small expansion pack that mostly added a few more campaigns.
* ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey (2009)'': A console-exclusive title (though it got ported to PC as ''Wings of Prey'' shortly thereafter). Not officially part of the original series, but generally considered an [[Adaptation Distillation]] [[Spin-Off]] of it for the console audience.
* ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover (2011)'': The sequel formerly titled ''Storm of War: Battle of Britain''. Likely to bring even more realistic flight models and a new graphics engine that'll bring high-end gaming desktops to their knees for the next few years if maxed-out.
{{tropelist}}
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* [[Anti-Air]] : Lots of various static and vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft weapons. Rookie pilots will quickly learn not to play hero and attack them head-on, instead trying out some evasive manouvevers before diving and spraying the target with a burst of explosive ammo (or rockets, if the plane is carrying any). AA guns are pretty much the ultimate nightmare while storming a heavily fortified enemy airfield and take some skill and practice to be effectively taken out, with minimal losses or damage on part of the player.
* [[Attack Pattern Alpha]]: During all missions, you can give a wide range of orders to your wingmen (if you're commanding any, that is).
* [[Auto Pilot Tutorial]]: ''[[Get On With It Already|Seriously...]]'' On the bright side, these tutorial vids also have a fair share of [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|interesting and action-packed moments]] and very often even [[Rule of Funny|a joke or two]].
* [[Battleship Raid]]: Quite a few examples, both literal (mainly in ''Pacific Fighters'') and figurative (hunting down bombers, especially [[Giant Flyer|large ones]]).
* [[Big Bulky Bomb]]: There are at least several enormous bombs that one can load onto an aircraft<ref>The biggest in the game, excluding [[Game Mod|Game Mods]], is the Russian 5,000-kilogram (11,000-pound) FAB-5000, which can only be carried by the non-player-flyable Petlyakov Pe-8 heavy bomber</ref>; the blasts from these are so big that, depending on the computer hardware running the game, their detonations can ''slow down the game''. And then there's their destructive power...
** Fan-made mods add 1950s-era jet planes, armed with Mk 7 and Mk 21 freefall nuclear bombs. Surprisingly, they're less bulky than some of the conventional explosives.
* [[Color-Coded Armies]]/[[
* [[Coming in Hot]]: The higher the realism settings, the higher the chance of returning to base with a barely flyable machine (or not returning at all). The game's manual even advises the player to drop any remaining bomb, rocket or fueltank payloads before attempting an emergency landing. If the bottom of your fuselage is seriously damaged, chances are that your undercarriage will literally fall to pieces once you try to deploy it for landing. With a bit of luck, you can still land though - [[Captain Crash|gliding slowly downward and skidding a bumpy ride on the fuselage]].
** [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|Or you can always just open the cockpit and bail out with a parachute...]]
* [[Cool Plane]]: If you're a [[World War Two]] military aircraft buff, you'll consider these games as outright [[Technology Porn]].
* [[Covers Always Lie]]: A rare ''[[Inverted Trope|inverted]]'' example of this trope : The IL-2 is not the only plane you can fly in the first game (let alone the series), but the cover art and title seem to imply the exact opposite.
* [[Danger Deadpan]]: [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] hilariously. Your fellow wingmen speak in a cool-headed, deadpan, professional manner most of the time - but just wait until you get into a particularly difficult dogfight or someone gets shot down... [[Mood Whiplash]] and [[Rule of Funny]] ensues. One of the Japanese "shot down/bailing" quotes is a particularly [[Narm|Narmtastic]] scream.
* [[Dieselpunk]]: To a degree, especially in ''1946''. It's got a more realistic than [[Rule of Cool]] tone, though.
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* [[Duel to the Death]]: Happens frequently after encountering a large enemy squadron or [[Worthy Opponent]] [[Ace Pilot]].
* [[Eagle Squadron]]: There are some examples of this, but they're already more official variations of the trope (e. g. British pilots helping the US in the Pacific theatre) or have something to do with the [[wikipedia:Lend-Lease|Allied lend-lease project]].
* [[Enemy Exchange Program]]: Seen constantly, just like in the real Second World War. Often results in the Allied and Axis side both using some of the same aircraft models or brands.
* [[Fighting For a Homeland]]: The Finnish, French, Polish and Soviet air forces would be the most clear-cut examples. Many additional fan-made [[Game Mod|mods]] also feature pilots of foreign occupied nationalities serving in the RAF (e. g. Czechoslovak fighter and bomber pilots). The French, Polish and Finnish air forces also double as [[La Résistance]] - the French forces being the [[Trope Namer]], of course...
* [[First Person Ghost]]: Played straight in cockpit view. Averted in all external views, where you can see the pilot characters clearly. They even make slight movements during flight.
* [[Game Mod]]: Thousands of new planes, paint schemes, maps, new sound and graphic effects packs, you name it. (Though installing them into the game can be quite a headache, since there are several similar but different applications for doing so created by various mod teams. Also, you have to make heads or tails of which version of the game you have and whether it's properly patched up, otherwise you're screwed.) The game boasts an impressive worldwide modder base, probably one of the largest ones continually in existence.
* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]/[[My Country, Right or Wrong]]/[[Worthy Opponent]]
* [[High Altitude Battle]]: Not as many as you would think, though a few missions involving bomber-busting start off in quite high altitudes.
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* [[Nose Art]] : Both in the form of actual nose art and selectable skins for the planes. The markings on your plane depend on the nation/faction you're flying for and can be turned off if you wish.
* [[No Swastikas]] : The German planes never carry the black swastika and the Finnish planes do not carry the historical Von Rosen cross, a light blue swastika on a white circle. This, despite the fact that the adoption of the Von Rosen cross predates the adoption of the swastika by the NSDAP by several years, and in any case was done to honor the Swedish count Erik Von Rosen, who had donated planes to Finland during their civil war. Soviet planes in the same game still carry the red star, which of course has unsavory connotations for many. In the real world, the Russian military still use the red star, despite the Soviet Union having been gone for 20 years, although the version now carried by the Russian Air Force, at least, is a red star outlined in white and blue, thus including the three colors of the Russian Federations's flag. The original Russian version of the game has both German and Finnish swastikas. Russians don't seem to mind. Naturally, many fan-made skins for German and Soviet aircraft also prefer historical accuracy over [[Politically-Correct History|inoffensiveness]].
** A humorous subversion appears in the case of smaller countries allied or subservient to the Axis powers. Romania, Slovakia and Hungary have stylized aircraft crosses unique to the era of their WWII regimes. These ultimately have the same connotations as Nazi Germany's swastikas, but the censors seemingly took a double standard approach in their case (probably because of the [[And Zoidberg]] status of the countries in the Axis). Anyway, this leaves these countries having more period-accurate insignia than the bigger players in the war. The insignia aren't completely uniform though : The skins donated to ''Forgotten Battles'' by Slovak modders feature both the roundels of the [[The Quisling|WWII regime]] and the local [[La Résistance]].
* [[Old School Dogfighting]]: ''Well, [[Captain Obvious|duh]]...''
* [[Roboteching]]: Some of the German fighters in ''1946'' (the Ta-152C, Ta-183, and Lerche) carry X-4 guided missiles. Of course, as the setting saw the beginning of guided weaponry, these missiles have to be manually guided to their targets.
** A recent patch for ''1946'' adds in several more actual WWII-era guided weapons (namely the German Hs-293 anti-ship missile and Fritz-X radio guided bomb, and the American Razon guided bomb and [[wikipedia:Bat (guided bomb)|Bat]] anti-ship guided bomb). Although the first three also have to be manually guided, the Bat is a "fire-and-forget"-type weapon.
* [[Rare Vehicles]]: The ''1946'' expansion added some speculative implementations of German and Soviet prototype aircraft, most notably the Heinkel Lerche (the aircraft that looks like a rocket/cigar surrounded by a shrouded turbofan).
* [[See the Whites of Their Eyes]]: [[Justified Trope|Justified]], since this is the most reliable way of scoring a [[One-Hit Kill]] against enemy aircraft, especially if you're dogfighting aboard a fighter against other fighters. It also eats up much less ammo compared to attempts of shooting someone down from a far greater distance (like, say, a mile or two).
* [[Shoot the Fuel Tank]]: [[Zig-Zagging Trope|Played straight with some aircraft, subverted with others.]] It all depends on what class, type and specific model of aircraft are you shooting at. Each has different [[Flawed Prototype|design weaknesses]], including vulnerable [[Attack Its Weak Point|(and well exploitable)]] construction flaws.
* [[Sink the Life Boats]]: Shooting parachutes. You can shoot the pilot, leaving his lifeless body dangling on the chute. Or you can shoot the chute, [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|sending the poor devil plummeting to his death]].
* [[Shown Their Work]]: ''[[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|And how!]]''
* [[Some Dexterity Required]]: The flight models are generally very twitchy and unforgiving of hamfisted flying. If you don't handle the stick and rudder with finesse, you WILL get the aircraft into a nasty stall or spin that you can only recover from after massive altitude loss-if you don't get shot up while trying to recover. In addition, gunnery is very difficult and will require a steady stick.
** This is especially true if you turn on all the realistic settings. The whole game can be controlled easily via keyboard, but joysticks are generally the better controller on higher and more professional difficulties.
* [[Storming the Castle|Storming The Airbase]]
* [[Subsystem Damage]]: Individual cockpit instruments can be shot out, in addition to control surfaces, engines, fuel tanks (they may just leak instead of outright exploding), and of course, the pilot.
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* [[Tech Demo Game]] : Especially when it first came out in 2001. Amazingly, if you purchase the final ''1946'' edition of the game and crank up all the graphic settings to "perfect", the game can ''still'' put quite a bit of strain even on a current high-end computer. Not bad for a game [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB8JY96cQK8 that started development] in the second half of [[The Nineties]].
* [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]: The AI pilots' flight model is simplified, and even though this has been toned down in the many patches, they still don't suffer from blackouts or engine overheating. They also have superior performance in general, but thankfully this is not a problem in multiplayer...
** AI pilots - and AI gunners - are absolutely unaffected by turbulence and G-forces, which leads to a curious situation where the most dangerous opponents in single player mode are modest attack aircraft with a rear gunner, as they can perform evasive manoeuvres whilst delivering a continuous stream of lethally accurate fire to your pilot's head. Whether this was intended to make the IL-2 itself more survivable (the real aeroplane suffered horrendous losses) is debatable.
* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]: You can customize your pilot in ''[[Clo D]]'', selecting various flight suits and other equipment like life jackets and parachutes. You can also select not to wear a parachute, in which case bailing out causes your pilot to flail around as he plummets to his death.
* [[Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You|The IL-2 Is About to Strafe Your Tank]]
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=== This series also completely (and notably) [[Averted Trope|averts]] the following aviation tropes: ===
* [[Air Jousting]]: However, there is one rare situation where this can become [[Truth in Television]] - when an enemy aircraft is coming directly toward you at high speed. The one who manages to shoot a burst of ammo at his adversary first, comes off as the victor in these instances...
** Mind you this Trope is ''encouraged'' by some [[Real Life]] dogfighting Dictas (like [[Big Book of War|Dicta Boelke]] for one) but only in certain circumstances like when there are a bunch of fighters on your six.
** Most experienced pilots in multiplayer avoid head-on approaches like a plague because they put both aircraft in equally great danger of getting hit by bullets or the other plane, and instead elect to avoid the head-on and try to gain an advantage in angles or energy to get into good firing position.
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* [[Easy Logistics]]
* [[Every Bullet Is a Tracer]]: A lot of them are, but not all.
* [[High-Speed Missile Dodge]]: Since only one or two planes (from ''1946'') are equipped with guided missiles, the aversion of this trope also applies to machine gun fire from close distances.
* [[Historical Hero Upgrade]]/[[Historical Villain Upgrade]]/[[Video Game Historical Revisionism]]
* [[Hollywood Tactics]]
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Only if you turn off Limited Ammo in the realism/difficulty settings .
** Can be fun though, especially if you're piloting a plane equipped with any form of rocket - [[Macross Missile Massacre]], anyone? [[Awesome but Impractical|Too bad that rockets always need a few seconds to recharge between salvos]]...
*** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|That's nothing compared to the mayhem of carpet bombing everything in sight with your infinite loadout of bombs]].
* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]
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