IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover Revisited

IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover Revisted

The graphics are greatly improved too - no stuttering as trees and buildings come into view and you're no longer terrified to drop to low altitudes for fear of everything coming to a stuttering halt either. Much of the scenery looks extremely good indeed but it's the re-worked sound engine - something that's been done in a post-release patch - that was the most interesting.


Finally we have the beginnings of a realistic-sounding Merlin engine. It's not perfect, but the occasional pop and crackle as well as the low growl you get when a Spitfire flies away from you, is by far the best we've heard in a flight sim. The characteristic whistle of the BF109 is there too, both of which remind us of scenes in the film Battle Of Britain.


At high altitudes, the game comes into its own. The patchwork of fields and coastlines look superb, if a little generic in places, but it's immediately obvious what country you're flying over. The water effects are second to none too and infinitely better than those in its predecessor or FSX.


The depth of colour of the water is fantastic with various shades making it seem far more realistic and this didn't seem to impact on the performance too much either. Rivers still look a little bland, but seeing as you'll be spending a majority of your time in CoD over the channel, this isn't a major issue.

Worth a revisit?

The question we set out to answer is whether the game was worth digging out again? The answer is a resounding yes. Our main issues with the release game were the graphics performance. It was so bad that we deemed it unplayable at anything above low to medium settings, where it quite frankly looked no better than its predecessor which is a decade old. Combined with the lack of offline content, namely a dynamic campaign engine, we played it for less than 10 hours and gave up, despite the efforts the design team had put into the realism and accuracy.


Thankfully, many patches later, the graphics issues have been largely resolved, and we're left with a flight sim that's mainly just demanding, rather than entirely badly coded. All four cores on our Core i5-2500K were getting a workout but even with a mid-range graphics card, we were able to play it at high settings at 1,920 x 1,200 with 8xAA, with only very crowded skies and explosions in the cockpit view seeing the frame rate drop below 30fps.

Our main problem now, for offline play anyway, is that there's simply a huge lack of content compared to older titles in IL2 series, and despite assurances at the start, very little seems to have been done about this. If you're mainly in for the online dogfights, then Cliffs of Dover is definitely worth a look, even if you haven't bought it yet. For fans of offline flying, the game still retails for £30, which is a lot to ask, especially when you consider that IL-2 1946, which includes everything its predecessor had to offer, costs just £10. If, like us though, you already own it, but gave up at the first hurdle, then it's definitely worth a second look. Even if you complete all the missions and campaigns in a few hours.