Topic: IL-2 Sturmovik

[scottws]

Has anyone played this?  Does it still hold up well?  I was thinking of getting it.  IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 (the game and all expansions) is only $20 at Gogamer.com.

Of course then I'd need a decent fighterstick/throttle/pedal combo, and this could turn into a $200 game real easy.

[scottws]

$200 game?  I found bundles of the Saitek x54 Pro Flight stick and throttle and pedals for $265 and it seems the serious online community around this game uses this thing called TrackIR.  It's $175.

[sirean_syan]

I bought it long ago when it was first released, but never put adequate time into it. When it was first released my computer was started to get to that point where new stuff wasn't running so well, so I put the game aside never to pick it up again.

Everything I heard and read pretty much made the game out to be the final swan song of the old school fight sim and was great in pretty much every way. Considering how fans of the genre are, I can understand how the community is still around and kicking. I also imagine a lot of them and borderline nutcases.

[scottws]

The TrackIR thing isn't that necessary as there are other ways of looking around the cockpit.  But it is pretty damn sweet and easy-looking.

If I got this, I would definitely want a flightstick and throttle.  It's no fun playing these kinds of games on a gamepad and even just a joystick is troublesome.  The pedals I'm not sure about.  I've been looking at a Saitek x54 Pro Flight Controls flightstick/throttle combo and the stick twists and you can use that as the rudder.  I would think that would be easy enough...

Still... the lowest I found that for was $130.

[sirean_syan]

That's a lot of money for stuff that games just no longer use. If this was almost a decade ago when great sims were still coming out, it'd be cool but these days it's just kinda nuts. Of course, I bought Steel Battalion back in the day...

You can get pretty good joysticks that combine all the features of a full flightstick, peddles, and throttle pretty well. Sure, it's not as full featured as the bigger setup, but then you don't have to work on making your PC area accommodate all that stuff. Combine that with the TrackIR and you've probably got a really fun setup. The good thing about that is if you're playing that and decide you really want more, a decent combination joystick isn't so much money that you'll feel completely put out if you go and upgrade to a bigger setup.

[scottws]

There's no way that a joystick can combine all the features of a flightstick/pedals/throttle well.  Especially on the throttle part.  At best you're going to have just a wheel, which is no good at all in a good fighter sim because you're going to be playing with the throttle almost constantly in a dogfight.  And that's just the throttle itself without all the extra buttons.

Anyway, I'm considering it but I don't know.  I'm not worried about future games supporting the stuff or not.  I'd be buying it for IL-2 and maybe Falcon 4.0 if I could ever find the disc.

[sirean_syan]

The throttle suffice for some of the flight sim stuff. It's really just an entry level thing to try things out.

But really, if you're considering Falcon then I'd say go for it if you've got the money to spare. That's the game that'll keep on giving. I imagine you could play for years with that and the fan community is probably even crazier.

[scottws]

Yeah, I had Falcon 4.0.  It was some limited edition I think.  Had a big full-size binder and everything that walked you through every tutorial in the game.

I was able to land fine, even with a flame out which was pretty damn hard.  I could never do an aerial refueling or dogfight worth a shit though.  The throttle would have helped for the refueling.

The dogfighting though... I have no idea.  The one training mission where you first encounter baddies that will shoot back I could never do anything on.  They always spawned behind you and would shoot missiles almost immediately.  You were supposed to be able to dodge them but I never could.

Anyway yeah, I don't know what happened to the CD-ROM.  I wonder if it's on Underdogs...

Edit:  Nope.  Looks like some other company bought the rights to it and re-released it with a bunch of integrated community fixes.  Hell it's $40!!!  The game is 10 years old!  Amazingly this Allied Force version works on Vista though.