[Alien]

This review was posted at Yoyosims.pl on 10.06.2012 by Yoyo. It's HIS work, not mine. I'm just a translator

Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs. J. C. Dundas

"The mechanics with naked torsos are standing next to ready for takeoff machines. They keep looking in the direction of the barrack where Gruppe's pilots are being briefed.

- They're coming - said one of the Gefreiters.

Wick is surrounded by the pilots of his Staffel. All of them are already wearing operational uniforms on top of thich they have yellow life vests. Around high, black shoes are hanging belts with flares. Helmut Wick stopped in front of the first mechanic, who gave him a report on the machine's combat readiness. Then he looked up in the sky. At that time somewhere above must already be bombers which their Gruppe is supposed to cover. With a quick move, Wick saluted back to his mechanic, thanking for the report. He was serious and meditative. Once more he faced the pilots of his 3/JG2 - Good luck! You know today's not going to be a walk in a park. His subordinates were looking at him in a silence. On their faces were glowing sweatdrops. Wick, before faced his machine, blessed them by lifting his arm. Several minutes later the airfield sounded with a roar of the engines of the machines taking off. The fighters rolled on the runway in pairs and then, with the thunder of the engines, they ascended to the sky.

Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-4s during their takeoff to another mission above the Channel.

Over the southern shores of England were hanging single cumuluses. They looked like tall, white towers definately contrasting with the blue sky. Immediately after their takeoff fighters started to gain altitude. Shortly afterwards before their windscreens lines of the English coast appeared. Oberleutnant Wick was flying on the left side of the formation. He spotted bombers flying on about 1000 meter ceiling. It was a formation of about fifteen Junkers Ju 88s, which smooth silhouettes were getting more and more visible. Before a minute passed, on the side of the sun Spitfires and Hirricanes appeared. At the edges of their wings were flashes of gunfire.

Sky dance between two opposite sides

Inside of Wick's helmet sounded an order of the Gruppe's commander. The leader had shortly shaken his wings and put his machine into a deep turn. Meanwhile the sky turned into a real hell. About seventy British fighters were swarming around the bombers. This day it seemed Tommis were everywhere. They divided into small groups doing the predictable, but seeming to be successful, tactics. Wick's machine kept flying straight for a moment. But then its pilot suddenly pushed the stick away, seeing below four Spitfires getting ready to attack the bomber formation. With a large speed advantage were the enemy planes getting closer to one of the left-hand, outer Ju 88s. After making his turn, Wick directed his Bf 109 between the bomber and the agressors. Short bursts, which he fired while diving, were nothing more than just a try to distract the opponent. But the enemy fighters weren't fooled by this bluff. They just got into a distance allowing them to open effective fire. They silhouettes were growing. Wick was diving almost vertically. In a split second time the Messerschmitt Bf 109 E passed the pair of the Spitfires. With the force of his both arms, Wick pulled the stick. The machine was turning very rough. Finally, the front of the engine lifted up and the plane got placed right behind the last Spitfire.

The vortex of the aerial battle and a kill

Two, three seconds and the machine appeared in Wick's gunsight. From the muzzles of the cannons and MGs bursts went in its direction. When the Spitfire eventually went off the line of fire, it was already trailing a long flame. The canopy had gone off and the pilot bailed out of the flaming machine. In the meantime the second Tommy has made a piece of destruction. The MGs of the British fighter were still firing when a Ju 88 disappeared behind a wall of fire. The English pilot seemed to be mad. Now he was flying just 50 meters behind the burning German bomber. Two human bodies separated from the cloud of fire and glided down. The tail of the Spitfire grew to enormous size in Wick's gunsight. After the first burst from the left wing of the enemy machine fell off some fragments. Less than five meters above the canopy, inside of which was the British pilot, Oberleutnant pulled up his Messer. With stopped breath, he looked around the air battlefield. He flinched in seeing a falling and flaming Bf 109. Everywhere around were swaying parachutes. The Ju 88s turned south-east. The Spitfires and Hurricanes kept swarming around them.

Flight in formation

Suddenly Wick spotted a single Hurricane sitting on a Bf 109's tail. He screamed to warn his colleague. Despite it the German kept flying without paying attention to the enemy's machine on his tail. In a fraction of a second Wick made the decision, putting his machine into a dive. He opened fire from a distance which gave little chances of hit. But the bursts made it to the target. The Hurricane had banked left, and then went down, flying upside down. Wick dragged his headphone onto the back of his head. He looked around again. On the sky were visible manoeuvering, diving and climbing planes. Countless contrails were cutting the air. It seemed the infernal dance was never to finish. The Death was constantly dividing new chances or instantly sentencing to death, which was irrevocable. Wick had taken a look on the fuel gauge and pushed the stick to the limit. The momentum of the air was whistling around the speeding machine. Both Messerschmitts were receding in the direction of the salutary coast of France with max speed."

THE REVIEW

Modern times and the addon "Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs J.C. Dundas" for IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover.

In 2011 Desastersoft from Germany started creating what was missing from the simulator IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover or hasn't been made like we would expect by the developers. I'm talking about the offline campaigns. In this topic, however, they aren't rookies. The developer has a lot of experience of Il-2 series' simulators' addons already. Their first titles appeared in the times of IL-2 Forgotten Battles and Pacific Fighters, on the previous game. Until now Desastersoft released addons such as (in chronological order):

•Fall Blau (IL-2 1946)
•Banzai! (IL-2 1946)
•Operation Overlord (IL-2 1946)
•World War II (IL-2 1946)
•Der Stern von Afrika (IL-2 1946)
•Der Eismeerjäger - Adler über der Tundra (IL-2 1946)

Most of them however have been related to the previous IL-2 series' titles. It would be useful to create something for the new IL-2 Sturmovik title though, which is the Cliffs of Dover. The boys have run into a quite deep water because the campaign was being worked on in the times I didn't touch the CoD with a stinking stick because of its unplayability and numerous bugs which however have partly lasted until today. The plus of the current situation is, that a medium hardware is quite capable of playing the Cliffs of Dover, especially after the last beta patch 1.06.17582 plus mini fix (the one used during the review making). So, another addons appeared from Desastersoft:

•Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs. J. C. Dundas (IL-2 Cliffs of Dover)
•Channel Battles - 1940 (IL-2 Cliffs of Dover) - currently only in German

The sim's developers from 1C ensure of another patches, it's nice, but a huge minus because of the long time of development, especially because in the end of the year we'll know quite a lot about the sequel of the CoD, the "Battle of Moscow" - what, when and for how much. If the CoD will still not be what it's excepted, the BoM may be a bad seller and the CoD's release undermined the image of the 1C and the authors of the great series on the II World War.

Here we are in the virtual environment. The JG2 on an airfield in the addon.

Desastersoft however believed the IL-2 trademark has a future and the programists' experience has let them use their knowledge of the previous series' titles. They've had an easier start because the CoD is based on the same FMB as the previous sims. So, in this way, the campaign set, named ,,Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs J.C. Dundas", which we're talking about, has been created. In the CoD itself we have very crappy and quickly made campaign - I can just feel the crappiness. Although it's just for the British side and one airplane, the Desastersoft has gone the hard way.

The airbases in the addon are on a high standard making the game nice. This is for both the German and the British side.

That's because the boys gave into our hands campaigns for both sides, for the defending against the Huns' invasion British and also for the German pilots of the Luftwaffe. So each one should find something interesting for themselves. In addition, we have campaigns dependent of plane type. Not like in the ,,default" CoD - just one and without some special climate. Unlike the 1C which was in hurry to make its offline campaign for the Cliffs of Dover, the Desastersoft had more time for this and was trying to give into our hands a polished product.

The new screen of campaign choice.

Like the name of the addon suggests, in the ,,Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs J.C. Dundas" we're going to have the story of the two aces from the battle of Britain period, but it's not all. The entire set is made of these campaigns:

•Fighter Aces! Major Helmut Wick – 25 missions
•Fighter Aces! Flight Lieutenant J. C. Dundas – 13 missions
•Erprobungsgruppe 210 – ME 110 Fighter bombers above England – 30 missions
•3./JG "Richthofen" 2 – Bf 109 – 40 missions
•No. 609 Squadron – Spitfire – 42 missions
•No. 111 Squadron – Hurricane – 27 missions

Emil during the airfield handling. It doesn't have markings because of a known CoD's bug, but let's compromise and say it's getting a new painting .

So completing all of this is a matter of tens of hours or even more.

The title ,,Fighter Aces! Helmut Wick vs J.C. Dundas" itself is being sold in two versions. The first one's box (PC DVD), which is also equipped with a printed manual and a map and codes for Luftwaffe pilot. The second one's the digital version where we download all of this from the developers' store in a zip file rightaway after we pay. It's also worth to tell some info on the set's price. At first, it was 30 Euros, but today it's less than 18, what with the current price of the CoD on the market [even 23 PLN (about 6 Euros) in Poland for digital download] makes the price more average and adding the CoD itself we get about 100 PLN (about 25 Euros). The review is on the digital version.

After the purchase we receive a link to a more than 400 MB large file, which one must download. The installation was problemless. The product installs in the Steam catalog with IL-2 and a part of it in My Documents (1C SoftClub folder). If someone would like to see how it works and if they will like the campaign and missions, they can download a campaign demo from the developer's site. I reckon it's 5 missions for each side. The demo however doesn't include all the features of the final version or the latest updates, which are in example bigger amount of radio comms. If someone, like I did, doesn't see any texts on the campaign menu, they have to switch the language of the game to English via Steam.

On the first screen we can see a new position in the CoD menu, with the singleplayer campaign. On the other one - campaign kills. Despite the weird-flying AI it's possible.

After the installation a new link on the CoD menu for single player appears. It's the Desastersoft Campaigns. By clicking here the new menu with the mentioned campaigns appears. One more note on the installation itself. The program asks us which campaign version to install. We have two of them. One is for weaker PCs. We have here missions and all the same but with limited amount of ground objects. Everything is to improve the ammount of FPS. The other version is the full dimensional product. It's going to add many ground objects which are mostly related to airfields. Thanks to this we'll see Bf 109s or Spitfires or some other planes, dependently of our side, which are being refueled or repaired, vehicles, some road AI near the airfields and so on. Be calm however, if we are satisfied with our CoD's performance, we can choose this version. I haven't noticed any FPS drops in game because of the objects, even at the airfields.

Bf 109 E in Cliffs of Dover on the le Havre airfield populated by Desastersoft and in flight. The Spit's been left alone already.

A very positive feature of the campaigns are the very different from the default mission statistics and an entire pilot's profile. Each mission which we pass gets summed. What's important, to pass to next mission we don't even have to get a success. The goal can be skipped, we can complete or not, we can have too little time to complete and so on. But if we'll return to the starting point and land our aircraft, stop before a hangar, the mission is assumed as succeeded (even if we belly-land, with the pilot ALIVE). Just like in real life, once we succeed, another time we don't. The statistics will sum it for us nicely. Even our hits and kills. We even can get a medal or promotion, with everything matching the historical rules of both sides.

Another example of mission debriefings and a high class award. The statistics may be more pricise, for that purpose we open one of the tags.

The primary goal of each mission is to... survive. That's it. It's because the author recommends to play it on full real. The campaign has some kind of dependency of the realism settings of the CoD. If we have everything marked as realistic, the campaign will recognise that the realism is 100%. Every faciliation causes balance loss of the values, but I don't know why it makes advantages instead of disadvantages. In example, I personally play the missions on a real full real with full engine management and so on, and only with outside views on (in other case I wouldn't be able to make so many outside screenshots ). It makes the realism 150%, and my logic says it should be in example 85%, if 100% is full realism. But it's a small note. I advise you to set the realism at somewhere around 100%. It raises the adrenaline and the respect for our pilot and plane.

Landing in a field. An element which we actually might pay with our virtual life for.

Why? As it was mentioned before, the priority here is to survive the combat. That's because our death is the end of our campaign. Oops. There is no save or return to previous mission with our own pilot. That's why while doing our goal we must be conscious and not underestimate even the strange flying AI whose fire can be dreadfully accurate if we don't notice someone was on our tail. One can also die during takeoff or landing, to collision with an object flying very low level. On one hand it's an option which may annoy us, because we fly, something happens, we die and the statistics go to hell. We must start over. On the other hand, if we fly on full real the plus is - it raises us the climate of the play and fives a taste of this kind of dogfights of the battle of Britain period. Death means death and that's all.

Another example, this time on the British side. The Hurri is a good shooting platform, especially against heavy and slow targets like bombers or patrol planes. Effective fire to engines brings everything down to the Channel. But against fighters it's less funny. Below we can see the "Be sure" screw and the Defence Medal.

The creators however made another option not to pass the same missions agian – which, let's not lie, are very linear (like it's in case of static, not dynamic campaigns). We can start the mortal mission with another pilot, without choosing the mission number 1 of the campaign, and we have an unfolding list and in such an emergency we can start mission in example 12th, which we failed to pass. The Gruppe/Squadron just got some new rookie and we, as the recruit, start flying with the other ones since another mission. We probably can call it like this because our statistics are zero and we just start to expand our character again.

A Hurricane of the 111 Squadron's campaign. The painting is actually chosen by player, not from the addon, but it's just nice to fly with a Polish checker of 306th Sqd.

On the topic of the pilot themselves, we can also change their picture, what means we customize something, and the name is the same as the Steam profile (we can change it if necessary, but the status of the campaign is under the nick with which we started it). Beside all of this the authors of the addon made tens of paintings, which are worn by the machines in the campaigns, some of the missions use default paintings too, but they've taken care of historical squadron emplacement and even the right tactical numbers on the aircraft. In this factor the producer earned a huge plus. On case of German machines there are no swastikas. It's caused by the German law, but there's a solution (at the bottom of the text there is a link to historical paintschemes for the German side).

Interiors of the cockpits inside which we theoretically should spend 100% of the flight time if we set the realism at 100%.

The missions themselves are entertaining. They might not be masterpieces but have been made very correctly. That's a shame it isn't a dynamic campaign, so if something happens here and now, it's also going to happen if we'll be repeating the mission. But there's such a large amount of machines in the air, that there will be an impression that each time something else happens. However it's difficult for me to speak about it because I think I haven't repeaten any mission (well maybe one because the sim's crashed). When we die we die, there's no "again" option. The overall after-mission climate is not bad. We have a debriefing, info on courses, our waypoints, average cruise speed and the ceiling of the mission. Because the map in the CoD doesn't show us a thing, we have to memorise or write down and direct using our navigational skills or fly after our comrades if we aren't the "boss" of our Staffel. Getting above the enemy's territory will in most cases mean being shot at by the AAA. Every moment next to us explode projectiles and puffs of black smoke appear.

The return from a mission of the Wick's campaign (the beginnings of his career). After each kill one can manually choose a skin with another kill mark on the rudder. Realism is realism, isnt it?!

This happens mostly above enemy airfields, but I suspect there should be much more such places. Another element that can appear during a mission is an appearance of enemy machines which, in relation with our fly-by, are scrambled from their airfields above which we fly, but this is rare. I noticed the script in several missions. A fancy and realistic idea. Of course we'll mostly fight with flying-by enemy machines. We'll be defending or attacking bombers, making patrol flights and go above enemy territory to raise our statistics and get another historical medal. Honor and fame.

THE END OF PART ONE DUE TO IMAGE LIMIT. PART TWO IN THE COMMENTS.