Birds of Steel is a fairly rare thing. It’s a serious vintage combat flight sim on consoles. It eschews much of the hyperbole of modern combat flyers, avoids the over-the-top action of arcade flyers and pitches itself firmly at the sort of console gamer that avidly watches the History Channel. It’s not a wide market, for sure.
[drop]There has been a lot of work on some areas of the game, with plenty of historical accuracy in both the montage videos, narrated by Stephen Fry, and the plane models and selection. Unfortunately, the voice acting throughout the game isn’t up to scratch and the campaign mode’s pacing nosedives too often into repetitive missions in which the core gameplay just isn’t compelling enough.There are over 100 planes in the game and each one seems to have been something of a labour of love for its creator, modelled with quite impressive precision. Unfortunately, they spend most of their time in the game as specks just above the horizon so the impact of the decidedly less impressive ground textures is, unfortunately, perhaps more striking. It’s a real shame that there isn’t more focus on the variety and detail of the roster here, some of the planes accurately modelled are little more than curios in the world of vintage flight buffs, with no pressing need to be in the game at all so their inclusion is obviously down to the fact that the developers at Gaijin love the subject matter.
Make no mistake, this is a game made for fans of vintage combat flight. The normal difficulty setting makes it suitably nervy and fiddly to even get your bird in the air. On the hardest setting, it’s a constant battle just to keep your aeroplane operating within its safe limits. This is the sort of thing that would be better suited to the semi-serious PC flight sim crowd so its appearance on consoles is surprising. The easy difficulty makes things a little less simulation and a little more “point and shoot” and there are concessions made in the way you target enemies but the dogfighting remains a troublesome spot of turbulence in the game’s final approach.
[drop2]The two campaigns, one for the US and one for Japan, are set in the Pacific theatre of combat and won’t take too long to work through. There is a list of single missions you can take part in and a dynamic campaign in which you win victories in the air that secure territory on the ground, so there’s a bit more to it than simply the campaigns. On top of that there’s a (rather sparsely populated, unfortunately) multiplayer mode which allows for up to 16 competitive players or four co-op players to take to the skies. Fill it with a regular group of friends and there’s some serious potential for lasting fun online.A fairly robust mission editor allows you to define quite specific parameters such as whether you’re flying over hostile territory (which shoots up at you), types of mission and even fuel load. There seems to be plenty of scope for extremely varied missions that should give this game an impressive lifetime, even outside of the multiplayer.
- Cockpits are very impressive, although missing for some bombers.
- Serious vintage combat flight sim with real love poured into it.
- There’s plenty of single player content to be getting on with.
- The mission editor looks likely to yield great results, over time.
Cons:
- Ground scenery gets a little rough around the edges at times.
- Campaign mode pacing is hampered with repetition.
- Voice acting makes radio chatter cringeworthy.
Birds of Steel is not a game that will set the world alight. It won’t tear up the charts or challenge FIFA or Call of Duty for hearts and minds. But the focus isn’t on being the kind of game that everyone will love, it’s on being a good fit for a smaller, knowledgeable fan base. It’s tricky to see how large a market there is for a game like this but if, by some chance, you’re a fan of vintage air combat from the WWII era then this is likely to have great appeal.
tonycawley
I can’t fly planes in games, never could, don’t think I’ll ever be able to. I’ve always liked the idea of it but am just terrible at doing it. For that reason I’m out even though I like the sound of this.
the bottler
I too am utterly useless at flying in games – battlefield 3 spent about 5 mins in planes, most of that was spent waiting to take off or plummeting towards the ground!
three_leg_jake
My sentiments exactly! Would love to be able to be good at these but never seem to get there. :-(
politicalanimal
gotta demo it
ron_mcphatty
Sounds like a miss. This seems to be a dying genre, I had a thrust master thingy andIL2 Birds of Prey which was fairly amazing looking and a lot of fun. Better on arcade with a regular controller though so if anyone’s after an exciting arcadey flight sim that also does mentally hard sim try IL2.
Jumping Monks
This sounds like just the game I’ve been looking for. I often find myself looking for games where I can fly aeroplanes, simply to jump in and fly, it’s the only reason I ever turn BF1943 on nowadays, to load up a training mission and fly around. It’s likely I’ll pick this up if I see it reasonably priced somewhere.
RankJunkie
Its probably a good call based on what you just described. This game is made for Flight Sim fans to appreciate. My site tracks ratings from multiple publications, the average is 72.25% unfortunately I have only tracked 2 sites to review it. You might want to get the demo first just in case.
Here is my site if you care: http://www.rankjunkie.com/games/ps3/birds-of-steel
Sympozium
The IL2 games look brilliant to me and this game looks nice even if it isn’t as good, I’m interested in these games but maybe at a lower price.
wonkey-willy
console and flight sims not the best equation..
not a big fan of flying games unless you’re talking about crimson skies which had it all..loved that back in 2003
Kennykazey
I do love old airplanes, but I’m not used to flight sims and with so many other games out there I’ll be skipping this. I think I’d be more interested in it if it was for pc to be honest.
aerobes
Sounds right up my alley and the demo was great too. Consider this in my “want” list. :)
Foxhound_Solid
Will give the demo a shot…
zb100
No thanks.
yogdog
This game definitely sounds like a fit for me, definite buy for me somewhere down the line!
aerobes
You accept /the/ paypal!? I’ll send Gonzo right over. :S