Here comes a short rundown of my first impressions and im gonna be honest. I'm in a hurry so pardon the language.
First of all i ordered the boxed version and i didn't expect a manual etc(which comes with CE) since it's been absent since the dawn of consoles, at least on the PC side of things.
Anyway so i installed the game without any hassle using Steam and i'm running it on the specs that can be seen in my signature. Booted up the game..
Lets get to the bad parts first, the game has obvious performance issues over land and you will not notice any significant improvement even if you turn your settings down. The fps stays around 10-20 which is unplayable, however over sea you'll quickly seen an increase and the game becomes more playable. There's also some stutters which honestly spoils the experience at its current state.
Minor bugs can be spotted a little here and there, you'll notice the absent of a wind sound if you open the cockpit at high altitude, and the lack of a volume bar in the options. While these are minor mistakes you'll run into quite a few of them and they bring they overall impression down.
As for online play its currently unavailable via the Server browsers due to some kind of Steam error, so i havn't had the ability to test the netcode etc just yet.
Now to some positive things..
As we all know the cockpits are incredibly detailed and it really shows just how much work went into them, they're interactive and you can click on the essential buttons,levers if you so wish.
The flight model and aerodynamics are vastly improved, it feels completly different from the original IL2(in a good way) , and flying the aircrafts equals a true joy whenever the game works.
Damage modeling is pretty insane(in a good way as well), several hundred components can be damaged on each aircraft and i've come to recon individual cylinders break down/get hit and affect my plane properly.. in a sense its just like the real deal where anything can get hit in the aircraft.
Internal sounds are excellent, unfortunately i cannot say the same about all external sounds, a few of them are good but for the Spitfire and Hurricane in particular they sound just as the IL2 planes, no real merlin noise etc
The Full Mission Builder is great, allowing you to setup missions and campaigns, and the support for future 3rd party content will ensure a rich amount of maps / mods in the future.
Summary;
It has its bugs and i've not even begun to scratch the surface, yes at the moment the game is pretty much unplayable and i would advice you to wait another few weeks for a complete experience.
But with that said, the game has a huge potential and if you manage to see through that and trust the developers and their trackrecord(IL2 2001 vs IL2 1946 equals a BIG difference) you'll know that this game will eventually be the greatest ww2 sim ever created.
All the bugs are currently being looked at by the developers and they've stated that performance tweaks and multicore enhancements are expected early next week along with a bunch of other fixes.
P.S
I'm sorry i couldn't write a more indepth review yet i haven't played it for many hours and i'm off for a couple of hours.
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