![]() Neeeeeyyyyoooowwmmmmmm, dakka dakka dakka dakka. ![]() This is a flight sim in the proper sense, that'll have you sitting in a plane, taking off, and dogfighting with those "bounders" in the romantic style of World War 2. And when we say flight sim, we mean proper flight sim - not like the boring, "The flight to Barbados is currently departing from gate 44 in Terminal 3" types, where you ferry sunburnt holidaymakers to and from their destinations. For those not trained in military terminology, the Pacific Theatre isn't where the Prisoners of War put on their annual variety revue - instead, it's referring to the part of the war that took place on that big blue wet thing in between Western America, and Japan. And then it did.īirds of Steel is a flight sim set in the Pacific Theatre of World War 2. Promising to hark back to the days of old, with its dulcet tones assuring us of a game offering historical accuracy, dozens of accurately modelled planes for us to jump into the cockpit of, and an experience that's about as real as flying itself (but yet is scalable enough to cater to flying novices), as well as coming hot off the heels of their last (stunning) flight sim, IL-2 Sturmovik, we were practically exploding with anticipation as we were waiting for Birds of Steel to drop through our letterbox. Where once you couldn't move for flight sims, many even based solely around an individual plane, suddenly, flying games were few and far between. At around the same time as the PC took over from the Amiga as the go-to machine for games, however, a funny thing happened - flight sims seemed to all but disappear. The Battle of Britain, Operation Overlord, F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship, B-17 Flying Fortress - the list went on and on and on. When I was growing up, I practically lived and breathed a diet of flight sims on the old Amiga 500. If you don't have your console connected to the internet - or, on the Xbox 360, don't have an Xbox Live Gold subscription, it's worth bearing this in mind.It's been a while since a game's got me quite as excited as Birds of Steel. It's worth keeping in mind that in order to unlock any planes beyond the initial limited starting set, you'll need to earn a certain number of in-game lion points, which can only be earnt by either playing online, or taking part in the Dynamic Campaign, a series of incredibly hard missions that have been designed for online co-operative play, and are very, very hard if you try and take them on on your own. It's this unforgiving difficulty, and emphasis on realistic flying that makes this recommended for older children only. On both difficulty levels, a single bullet is enough to take you out of the sky, making this rather frustrating.ĭue to the design of the game, which lets you take over as one of your wingmen when you get shot down, you have a maximum of four lives to complete each mission - presuming your wingmen haven't already been shot down themselves. While on the hardest difficulty, you'll be struggling to fly a plane that's as tricky to keep in the air as it would be the real thing, on easy, it's next to impossible for you to do anything wrong - although that doesn't make it easy. While it has a bent towards realism, Birds of Steel also comes with an adjustable difficulty, which lets you at least attempt to tailor the game to your skills.
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