IL-2 Sturmovik

Release Date: 9/18/2001

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 91%

Sales: 10,000

IL-2 Sturmovik was not only a legendary warplane of World War II but also a legendary flight sim for PC gamers. It has fantastic graphics (at the time) and was one of the most realistic sims of all time. The multiplayer was well talked about, but the canned campaign missions really brought the game down a bit. Thankfully, the IL2Gen utility allowed you to re-create randomly generated missions to help fix this issue. The missions were also short on objective hints and didn’t really tell you what to do. Most people didn’t even finish the campaign because of this.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles

Release Date: 3/2/2003

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 87%

Sales: 10,000

Forgotten Battles was the long-awaited expansion for the first game. It was a stand-alone game but didn’t quite have all the content people wanted. The campaign was still disappointing, but the improved graphics and audio experience helped quite a bit. Sim fans continued to mod the game and it looked like the IL-2 series made itself king of the flight sim family.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Operation Barbarossa

Release Date: 7/31/2003

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 66%

Sales: <10,000

Honestly, I can’t find much on this expansion. From what I can gather, fans were tired of the crappy campaigns and Barbarossa didn’t offer much that was new for the series. That 66% may be inaccurate because it’s based on just one review. It seems the series may have taken a nosedive at this point, but most of us will never know.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles – Ace

Release Date: 3/2/2004

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 82%

Sales: <10,000

This is where things picked up. Ace is the official expansion to the Forgotten Battles expansion. Ace was riddled with minor issues like there was no campaign for American fighters. The cockpits were fully rendered but nonfunctional, and various other technical problems with the planes during flight. Nothing that a few patches couldn’t fix, but fans ate it up and it helped continue the long-running successful series.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Pe-2

Release Date: 4/28/2006

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 85%

Sales: <10,000

Pe-2 has as little info as Barbarossa does. However, Pe-2 was a Europe-only release but the single reviewer seemed to have liked it. I can’t find much info on the series for how good it is, but from what I can gather it added many new great planes to fly and continued to slowly build the series into more excellence.

IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946

Release Date: 3/13/2007

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 85%

Sales: 30,000

1946 helped propel the series into a new generation and was the most successful so far. It accumulated all the previous games and made them playable on newer OS as well as adding a few tweaks, while also including all patches. This was a great package for newcomers and it seemed to have worked. If you want to start the IL-2 series this is the one to start with.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey

Release Date: 9/8/2009

Systems: PS3, X360, PSP, DS

GameRankings:

X360 — 80%

PS3 — 79%

PSP — 60%

DS — 42%

Sales: 

PS3 — 640,000

X360 — 470,000

PSP — 170,000

DS — 60,000

Oh boy, this is something you don’t do, abandon your main fan base. For years IL-2 was PC gamer’s pride and joy and Ubisoft turns around and makes the latest version a console exclusive. It didn’t help that the game was terrible. The console versions were just okay, they had great graphics but that’s about it. They were more arcade-like and it was ruined by the fact that no one was playing online. The portable versions were terrible with the DS version being the worst, the game was literally unplayable and broken. The PSP version had slightly better controls but was really ugly.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

Release Date: 4/16/2011

Systems: PC

GameRankings: 51%

Sales: 30,000

Ubisoft learned their lesson and brought the sequel (and so far final) game in the series back to PC. It was finally updated with top-notch visuals but was nearly unplayable thanks to the insurmountable amount of bugs and glitches. It shows that most series start out great and revolutionize something and then just fall apart in the end. The IL-2 series ran for 10 years with some ups and downs, but there are still many community fan sites that keep the series running.