Konami Announce Birds of Steel

Peter Chapman 19 Comments

The aerial combat genre is perhaps not the most well catered for in the history of gaming. There have always been options available for fans though, from modern jets to the Sopwith Camel which was used as early as the first World War. One particularly rich vein of source material for the genre is World War II.

Konami are tapping that vein with their latest announcement of a World War II aerial combat game called Birds of Steel for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Gaijin Entertainment are cramming in plenty of real historical missions (20) ranging from Guadalcanal and Midway to the attack on Pearl Harbour that drew the United States into the global conflict in earnest.

They’re promising over 100 ‘planes and the option to fight for the Allies, Axis or Japanese air forces. On top of that, there should be cooperative play and a range of control schemes to make sure that everyone from rookie pilots to veterans are catered for.

It’s looking very good indeed, hopefully we’ll hear more next month…

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19 Comments

  1. If the quality is anything like IL2 Sturmovik: Birds Of Prey, then i’ll be very interested in this title

    • It’s the same developer, so I’d certainly hope so. Looking forward to this one!

      • Same dev, sweet I didn’t realise. I will be following this ones progress for sure.

    • Both IL2 Sturmovik games I’ve played (PS3, PC) were good so I’ll give this a look.

  2. Always got to love a flight game. Nothing will match Sky Odyssey in my eyes though.

    • Only one I’ve ever played was ‘Wings’ on the Amiga, that was a great game! :-)

  3. Im interested , like most kids of the eighties i loved fishing , climbing trees , hunting with my massive Rambo Knife and building Aifix , Revell and Tamiya kits (only i wasnt on my Sinclair Spectrum of course) .
    I am a ww1 and 2 nut because of those comics like Victor , Battle and Commando with Johnny Red , Charley Bourne and Alf Tupper and his chips . Too cut a short story long this game looks great !

  4. Theres enough options for World War II dogfighthing games, the PS3 lacks modern jet fighter games as HAWX is the only series which offers such option and thankfully Ace Combat Assault Horizon is on the way.
    But can’t complain that much, might check the game out later on.

    • Yeah, after Apache: air assault I was hoping for something else original, but Gaijin are making yet another WWII flight game :( hopefully next year they’ll make a modern jet game. At least Ace Combat is gonna have fighters, helis and bombers so it should tick all the boxes.

    • Agreed, a proper sim-type game set in the present would be brilliant. I imagine it would be ridiculously hard though, flying a plane is nowhere near as (relatively) simple as it used to be. I imagine this is a major reason they’ve chosen WWII again.

  5. “plenty of real historical missions”
    Any giant enemy crabs? :P

  6. This sounds like it could be very good, however, 20 historic missions just doesn’t sound very much to me. A hundred planes is also all very well but will there even be a hundred people online ever? WWII flying games are not common and I haven’t seen huge popularity for them. Oh well, I’ll wait and see.

  7. ‘the Allies, Axis or Japanese air forces’

    FYI, the japs were part of the axis powers ;)

    • Yes, I thought about that as well but in reality the Tripartite Treaty wouldn’t have lasted had the ‘allies’ ever collided. It was an act on the part of Geramny and Japan to intimadate their enemies and very little happened between the nations involved. Also can you imagine 2 nations with ambitions of world domination halting because they have a minor alliance?
      Back to the game the Japanese deserve a special mention anyway: their dedication has become infamous legend.

      • Actually quite a lot of technology sharing went on. The Japanese built the Nakajima Ki-201 which was an almost direct copy of the ME262 after Germany shipped over one. For example.

      • Yes and the Ki-100 I believe which was a version of the Me163. However, a few projects sent by Germany hardly constitutes a major alliance and if both owned half the world I reckon they’d have gone for each other. The Japanese were also the first to recognise the Fw200 as a military aircraft. But do you know of anything the went the other way. it was an alliance of convenience and it was designed to intimadate America so they wouldn’t attack Japan.

  8. Nice.

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