The Sturmovik games have been a pillar of WW2 air combat ever since the first game was released back in 2001. Against all odds and countless games building on the same concept, the series has been very successful for Russian developer Maddox Games (“Sturmovik” is the name of the Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 fighter plane). Birds of Prey is the series first appearance on consoles, and it does a great job at delivering a solid WW2 combat simulator. However, the transition hasn’t been flawless, as a few issues prevent the game from being a top-notch sim.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey continues building on the successful formula, with plenty of new additions and updates, most noticeably the visuals. The worlds beneath you are now a lot more detailed, the dogfights are more intense, and following the trend of modern games, there are tons of unlocks to be had as well. The controls — arguably the toughest part to port from PC to consoles when you talk about flying games — have been done quite well, and the different control options and layouts are going to satisfy a wide variety of players, from the newbies to the pros. The difficulty level follows as well, from an arcade style to pure simulation, there’s something for everyone.

The campaign missions are fairly well thought out, however, it becomes rather tiresome after you’ve flown a few raids, since there is very little variety among them. The 20 missions span from Italy, to Britain, to Germany and to Russia, however, all of them have two objectives: bombing runs and dogfights. And while the dog fights are exciting and thrilling, it too gets tiresome after a few missions. It helps with the different theaters of war, but we would have wished for more variety in the mission structures.  There’s also a large verity of authentic planes — as expected — and they’re all very nicely detailed and feature a ton of encyclopedia information, in case that interest you.

Multiplayer wise, the game offers decent 16 player multiplayer, where you have the basic modes, Death Match and Team Deathmatch, in addition to “Capture Airfields” — a domination type mode where you have to land your planes on an airfield in order to capture them — and Strike Mode, where each side has ground units it must protect, while attacking the other side’s ground units. While the multiplayer is fun and satisfactory, it would have been even better with a co-op mode.

Technically, the game looks great, however, stability and frame rate issue plague the game a lot, especially during dog fights, the frame rate drop drastically and, at times, destroys much of the fun that dog fights are. It’s a shame, since a last round of polish probably could have evened out these bugs and made a very compelling game, instead of leaving players wishing for a patch. If you’re into WW2 air simulators, IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey is still recommended, despite the issues, it’s still the best WW2 air simulator out there, even if you’re not exactly looking for a sim, you can tone the difficulty down to arcade mode and still have a lot of fun.

The Good:
Detailed planes and environment
Thrilling dog fights
Fun multiplayer

The Bad:
Linear and repetitive missions
Frame rate issues
No co-op

Overall score: 7/10