IL-2 Sturmovik, the 2001 PC original, was for the hardcore. Not the Mario-loving hardcore. Not the GTA-loving hardcore. Not the people who memorize JRPG scripts. No, the hardcore of World War II combat flight-sim lovers. The people who want the planes in their Russian-developed games to handle as accurately as the cars in Gran Turismo.

I hadn't played the PC original. And I'm not a WWII flight-sim guy. But I was worried for those hardcore IL-Sturmovik fans when I was invited to try a multiplayer session of of the 1C-developed, 505 Games-published upcoming console edition of the series. The 505 rep doing the demo started out by saying the game I was about to play would be like Call of Duty in the air.

What Is It?
IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey is a World War II flight combat game developed by the Russian studio behind the franchise, 1C. It's published by 505 Games, the new-ish publisher doing upcoming games based on Grease and Michael Phelps. Yes, they're diverse. Birds of Prey is coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, PSP and Nintendo DS.

What We Saw
I played parts of a couple of multiplayer skirmishes on a networked Xbox 360. The game includes more than 45 planes from the 1941-1945 war in Europe, but I foolishly chose one of the weakest, the original IL-2 Sturmovik — a Russian plane — that had poor guns and armor. I should have chosen a newer IL-2 if I didn't want my wings to get perforated by enemy fire.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is set for a September release and a demo is scheduled for the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the first week of August, so I gather that what I played is close to completion.

What Needs Improvement?
My Patience (Or The Game's Controls): Good news, hardcore IL-2 fans — I think. I have not played the original PC IL-2 Sturmovik, but I now have no reason to think that the simulation values of the original were abandoned in this game. Even the Arcade mode in the new game is less forgiving than Ubisoft's HAWX, which felt like it was an auto-pilot compared tho this. A targeting reticule in arcade mode helps show how far ahead of an enemy plane your bullets need to lead. But even with that it's hard to hit the enemies. This is no easy game to control — a sign that either it's got really good, complex sim controls or it's got poor, stiff controls. The 505 people showing me the game would surely say it's the former, but I can't judge it during a half-hour appointment. Check the demo next month and feel for yourself. I flew into the ground twice. Into another plane once. But I did shoot another player's plane up a bit before he lost me in the clouds.

The Graphics In Motion: The gallery below presents one of the loveliest batch of screenshots I've been sent by a publisher in a while. But the simple explosions and the detailed but lifeless terrain don't make the game come much more alive when it's put in motion. The planes are the stars. And the vistas are lovely. Anything that would animate doesn't look as great.

What Should Stay The Same?
The History: Authenticity is a goal rarely pursued in home console games. But IL-Sturmovik is going for it, representing real planes in minute detail and replicating historical battles across its six campaigns of, combined, 50 missions. The Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Bulge, and campaigns over Berlin, Sicily and Stalingrad are here. The missions are based on diary entries written by real fighter pilots who fought in those battles.

The Range Of Realism: Play in Arcade mode and it will take a lot of gunfire will make your plane lose control. Play in Realistic or the even the more realistic Simulation mode (gotta love how difficulty settings are named) and you will have to worry about stalling, won't have an aim-assist and will find your plane flying in realistically hampered ways determined by how bullets have poked holes in your wings, rudder or fuselage. At any level, expect your plane to move in realistic and less-player-assisted ways than you would find in more mainstream flight games. Controls in any of the game's modes put pitch and roll on the left stick; throttle and yaw on the right. 505 reps say some flight sticks will be supported.

The Graphics In Frozen Moments: The planes and the skies look lovely.

Final Thoughts
The "Call of Duty in the air" reference made at the beginning of my demo was something I didn't get to follow-up on. The game is by no means as fast-action as Activision's first-person shooter series. But the feel of having an enemy ace on your tail, and the sight of bullet trails whizzing past, then — oh, no — through your wings, is plenty exciting.

I didn't get to try a base-capture option that 505 wanted to promote as a key multiplayer component. In that mode, I was told, players will land at a base, and only when their wheels are still will they begin to capture it and shave points off their team's total, Battlefield style.

What I did see and play looked good for World War II flight combat enthusiasts. If you're looking for something with a more realistic feel, follow this one. And try the demo in August.

We all know (and possibly love) Ubisoft – the French game studio has been bringing us multiplatform hits for years. This month's preview event hosted by the developer was a Nintendo-centric affair, though they were nice enough to include Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood in the swag haul.

Pictured:
Autographed pink Rayman Raving Rabbids Thong (?!)
Rayman Raving Rabbids T-Shirt
Red Steel 2 T-Shirt
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles classic cartoon logo sweatband
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood for the Xbox 360
Ubisoft logo laptop case

About a week earlier than that – in fact, the very day Fawcett and Jackson passed away – I attended 1C's annual Another Night in Moscow event held at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. Now, 1C is more obscure than Ubisoft, but I'm told it's like the Microsoft of Russia. Judging from the lavish party and modest swag haul, I could see why somebody would say that.

Pictured:
1C logo Russian fuzzy hat
Another Night In Moscow t-shirt
1C logo swag bag
1C logo pen

Not Pictured:
1C logo notebook that I totally lost at Santa Cruz

But whether you love them or have even heard of them, both companies delivered a huge haul of previews and early looks at games we can expect this year. Just in case you missed them, here they are:

Another Night In Moscow
Get Some Russian In Your Independence Day
XIII Century: Blood of Europe - All The Brutality, None Of The Plague
Death To Spies 2: Moment of Truth Preview: SMERSH is a fun word to say
Trucking It In Rig 'n' Roll
Captain Blood Preview: Errol Flynn He Ain't - But He'll Do

UbiNintendo
Academy of Champions Preview: It's Harry Potter But With Soccer And Sam Fisher
C.O.P. The Recruit Preview: If Only Becoming A Police Officer Were So Easy
Shaun White Snowboarding World Stage Preview: Snow In Summer
TMNT Smash-Up Preview: Will The Real April O'Neil Please Stand Up?
Rabbids Go Home Preview: Rabbids Go In Your Wiimote
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes Preview: The Might Of Mana… and Puzzles
Red Steel 2 Preview: Whack-tastic Fun

Men of War: Red Tide is a standalone expansion to the March 2009 PC realtime strategy game, Men of War. The game puts players in the shoes of the Black Coats — special Soviet forces that fought a ton of battles along shorelines during WWII. There are 23 missions in the game featuring Soviet, German, Italian and Romanian forces and a ton of military units at the player's disposal like tanks, armored cars, bombers, gunboats and other things that go boom.

This Independence Day... say it with Soviet Russia.

Unicorn Games' hardcore strategy game, XIII Century, recreates the battles between Teutonian knights and their target, Pskov city (which is part of present-day Russia).This expansion, Blood of Europe, zeroes in on more of the legendary fights as well as adding. Eight new missions in particular focus on the battles fought by Dovmont, Prince of Pskov.

The game looks pretty good both in the overhead God view and in the zoomed-in battlefield mode that actually lets you see the heads fly during combat. A definite requisite in historical Russian combat.

The key difference in Death to Spies is that the player takes the role of a SMERSH (read: badass Russian counterintelligence agency) operative during World War II instead of a bald hired goon. As a SMERSH operative, the player is given numerous sneaking missions and stealth options like disguises that allow them to infiltrate and kill Nazi officials. This formula worked okay for the first game. Let's see how well it stacks up for the second.

What Is It?
Death to Spies 2: Moment of Truth follows main character Strogov's return to the agency from his previous missions and his new assignment to off more high-ranking Nazis and commit all kinds of espionage after infiltrating their bases.

What We Saw
I played an early mission that involved stealing a uniform, stealing a car and then going to three different points on a Nazi base located somewhere in the woods to obtain plans for some kind of Nazi attack.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out in late July.

What Needs Improvement?
Mission Should Auto-Fail If You Hose Yourself: Several times during this mission I would botch my first kill and be unable to steal a uniform. I found that it's impossible to complete the mission without that uniform and that there was no other way to obtain a uniform – but the level wouldn't fail me out unless I actually got shot or blown up. I asked if this was a bug and was told that it wasn't – so in other words, you could hose an entire mission in the first five minutes and not actually know it until you got shot or blown up. That's harsh.

Not A Lot Of Cues: I had infiltrated the base successfully and was looking for the kitchen to steal a chef's outfit. However, there was no map to tell me where the kitchen was. Also, there were no audio cues to alert me to the fact that I'd wandered into the wrong building – until after all the Nazis started screaming and shooting at me.

What Should Stay The Same?
Map Overlay Mode: The map the game provides players tells you where you are, where you target is and where all the enemies are looking. The map can be hidden, if you prefer the challenge – or you can move it from a mini corner view to a transparent overlay that covers the screen. It's very convenient and particularly helpful to navigating the massive levels.

Lots of Options: You can chloroform people, shoot them with myriad guns, garrote them or just plain shank them en route to your objective. You can also choose not to kill people if you're feeling magnanimous – a choice that not all spy games grant. Though obviously this goes out the window if you primary objective is an assassination.

Level of Detail In Disguises: When I managed to steal a uniform, I was impressed to find that Nazi soldiers would know I was an imposter simply by seeing my character carry the wrong gun. I was sort of sad to part with my shotgun, but if it's in the name of realism, I count it as a plus.

Final Thoughts
To really appreciate Death to Spies 2, I'd say you'd have to have played the first one. Most of the tweaks to the interface and general improvement in gameplay and graphics were made in response to requests from the Death to Spies community. Even so, however, there is a solid stealth game here that I think people will appreciate. People like me who got burned by Velvet Assassin.

Players take the role of a young man in the year 2024 to drive ginormous trucks from one end of the Golden State. I guess that explains why there's not much traffic in these screens. In the future, they'll actually be done with roadwork on I-5 and the 101.

I'm actually sort of curious about this game. Curious in a morbid way that makes me wish for truck stop mini games of an entirely inappropriate nature. Look for it on PC sometime this year if you, too, suffer from this curiosity.

Loosely based on the Rafael Sabatini books that spawned an Errol Flynn movie and possibly a 2011 remake by director Phillip Noyce, Captain Blood follows the adventures of a doctor sold into slavery who later becomes a pirate. Developer SeaWolf picks up the story between the time when Captain Blood is no longer a slave and the time when he settles down with Olivia de Havilland.

What Is It?
Captain Blood is an action-adventure game for the Xbox 360 and PC. Players navigate Blood through linear levels on foot and through open water in his ship, the Arabella. The on-foot parts involve hacking and slashing rival pirates with a series of cutlass combos and occasionally shooting them with stolen pistols or muskets. The open water parts involve aiming cannons at attacking ships and clearing the deck of rival pirates that manage to board.

What We Saw
I played one boss fight about five times without being able to beat it and then quit out to the main menu to play a boat level where the goal is to sink four or five attacking ships.

How Far Along Is It?
Captain Blood is due out this winter. Publisher 1C says the game is still in alpha and there are some significant changes to gameplay in the works. It looks like the major gameplay elements are in place and the graphics look a lot further along than alpha.

What Needs Improvement?
Hack, Hack, Slash, Slash, Rinse, Wash, Repeat: A lot of hack ‘n' slash games get a little repetitive and Captain Blood is no exception. Part of that comes from the weapons Blood had on him during that boss fight; as you progress through the game, you're supposed to be buying better and better weapons which can be upgraded for more combos. Unfortunately, Blood only had the one cutlass with him and just two combos that never quite seemed to do enough damage. Worse, a lot of the animations repeated themselves during the boss fight – like a mini cut scene where the boss pulls a weapon out of his treasure chest.

Blood Falls Backwards: During the boss fight, the bad guy pirate would lob firebombs at Captain Blood. Whenever he'd get hit by the fire, Blood's injury animation would cause him to fall backward into the fire. This would cause him more damage and he'd keep falling backward deeper and deeper into the flames until he died or the fire went out. I hope this is one of those "significant" gameplay changes the developer is still working on.

Rage Mode Doesn't Do Much: There's a special Rage Mode that the player can trigger with the right bumper which supposedly makes Captain Blood do more damage. All it did for me was turn the edges of the screen white and fuzzy and make the controller vibrate.

You Can't Control The Camera. Ever: Boo!

What Should Stay The Same?
The Boat Levels: It certainly sounds repetitive to run back and forth across the Arabella's deck, trying to get to different cannons to fire on enemy ships. However, because the firing of the cannon requires actual skill, it's pretty exciting. Each cannon has a limited range of side-to-side movement and its arced trajectory is realistic. A misfired shot might go over an enemy ship to land harmlessly in the ocean on the other side, or it might graze the sails and render the enemy ship sluggish in the water. Distance and timing are key in this part of the game. Small, fast ships can zigzag up to or circle in on the Arabella and rake her while dropping off boarding parties. In the time it takes them to get there, they rarely present a target for more than a few seconds. Even when they do, it can take Captain Blood a long time to get from one side of his ship to the other what with all the deck clutter and frantic crew members in the way.

The Graphics: The colors in Captain Blood were pretty vibrant and the water looked amazing. Surprisingly, the environments reduced the repetitive feel of the gameplay – and since you spend about half the game on a boat or near a boat, water appearance is all-important.

Dodge Roll: It's mapped to the right stick which is really helpful for getting out of bad melee situations and fire that you might fall backwards into.

Quick Time Events: I actually don't mind them in Captain Blood, perhaps because they're not necessarily required for boss fights or opening doors. If the captain gets knocked off a ledge or a cliff, he'll grab onto the edge and a QTE will determine whether or not you succeed in climbing back up – but the timing is forgiving. Also, instead of just mashing a button over and over again to encourage Captain Blood to try harder when climbing up the side of a cliff face, the sly dog will do cool things like parry a cutlass slash or grab a guy's leg and fling him over the side as he climbs up, making the whole QTE both useful in thinning out mobs and way more entertaining.

Final Thoughts
Captain Blood reminds me a lot of THQ's Conan from 2007 – it's a simple action adventure game based on a popular (if way-old) book series. Oddly, Captain Blood is less bloody than Conan; but it still has this over-the-top violence that makes the linear levels feel more fun. So it's like the pirate flavor of a game that was based on a book which was the barbarian flavor of Sabatini's pirate adventures. Awesome. Go check out that Errol Flynn version if you haven't already.

The diary is the product of all the designers and coders who are working on the title & is intended to illustrate the kind of decisions and creative choices that go in to making a game.

Or rather, it will be - at the moment there are only two entries. The first — "What shall we do?" — looks at how the sequel came into being, and how the team decided on the North African campaign as the focus of the game (spoiler: it involved palm trees).

Next is "Blood, Sand... & Map Editor" which looks at how the map designers took real-world locations and turned them into playable environments. Honestly, its more interesting than it sounds.

Theatre Of War 2 Developer Diary [Battlefront.com]

Funcom just announced that they have signed an agreement with 1C to fully localize the voice and text for a Russian version of Age of Conana: Hyborian Adventures. 1C will also operate local customer service, which I believe requires a gun license, deal with the community websites and in-game support for Age of Conan in Russian. Funcom still plans to take care of the back-end tech and server infrastructure as well as handling all future development for the game.

The companies plan to build a dedicated Russian realm to allow the Russian community the chance to stick together and communicate with each other in their native language. Didn't Czar Nicholas II try to create a Russian realm once? I'm pretty sure it didn't end well.

“1C Company is a clear leader in the Russian speaking regions, and we are confident we have found the perfect partner,” said Trond Arne Aas, CEO of Funcom. “We have already shipped a substantial amount of English boxes into Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, but we know that the real key to success is achieved through localized servers and services. Together with 1C Company we will do our uttermost to make Age of Conan a success for many years to come.”

“We are happy working together with Funcom on bringing Age of Conan to Russia. The game has already gained success here, reaching top places in many retail charts. With an already established fan base in Russia I’m sure it will become even bigger after the localized version appears on the market,” said Nikolay Baryshnikov, International Sales Director of 1C Company. “Age of Conan is a great mix of action, RPG elements and adventure. I believe that the game has potential to become a big hit in Russia.”

The game addresses the console audience by presenting a varying level of difficulty, from your arcade-style Ace Combat battles to full-on simulation. Assisting in the realism will be a damage model for each plane that allows players to holes in their wings and smoke trails during combat, along with detailed landscapes complete with realistic ongoing ground actions. An original score b Oblivion composer Jeremy Soule is just the icing on the cake.

The IL-2 series is one of the best combat flight sims the PC has to offer, so I am extremely interested to see how it fares making the jump to the consoles. Looking good so far!

A TIME TO FIGHT, A TIME TO PREY
Milton Keynes, England - 505 Games will be bringing 1C Publishing’s IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey to the console market for the first time. Developed by Gaijin Entertainment for Xbox 360 and PS3, DiP Interactive for Nintendo DS and DYNAMICSYSTEMS for PSP, the game takes place during the greatest aerial battles of all time (discounting Pterosaurs) and boasts the most realistic landscapes and aircraft seen in any flight sim. IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey will be published by 505 Games under the 1C Label and is due for a 2009 release.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey is based around large-scale aerial combat over the ground-based military operations of World War II. Players participate in the war’s most famous confrontations piloting fighters, battle planes or heavy bombers across a range of thrilling missions. There are five seats of war to engage in – The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Berlin, Sicily and Korsun – representing the main airborne battles of World War II in Europe.

As well as advanced environmental visuals enriching the game play, IL-2 also boasts an all new damage effects engine. Players can see real time damage to the aircraft such as holes in the wings and trail lines during dog fights. Hundreds of airplanes taking part in air battles is a distinguishing feature of IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey and the unique environmental engine also produces highly detailed, realistic landscapes that allows players to see a brand new simulation of ground support actions.

Features
• Authentic World War II atmosphere
• Engage in more than 50 thrilling missions from famous historical battles over Eastern and Western Europe and fly historically accurate aircraft
• Completely flexible difficulty level system: from arcade to realistic simulation
• Thrilling multiplayer mode support customisation – from the colour scheme of your plane to your choice of weapons.
• Cutting edge, highly-detailed visuals, realistic sound and original music from Jeremy Soule (composer of Company of Heroes, Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Guild Wars, Neverwinter Nights, Prey, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Total Annihilation, Unreal II, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and many more.)

505 Games will publish IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey on the 1C Label for PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and PSP in 2009.

1C is using cutting-edge technology, including the amazing power of modern consoles, to bring superior games to every market... Our aim is to bring our games to even more players and expand our vision with cross platform development. We are embracing any new gaming technology that will improve our products including digital downloads, consoles, handheld gaming, Epic's Unreal 3 Engine, NVIDIA PhysX and DirectX 10.

Both games will be out late 2009 and will be the first cross-platform titles "from 1C to be developed and published worldwide." Seems like multiplatform is the new, big thing.

1C Announces First 360-PS3 Titles [MCVUK]

Theatre of War
This is a real-time strategy game that depicts the large World War II battles. There was a significant amount of time put into research of World War II to make this game absolutely accurate. It took a team of three historians researching for 18 months before this game was ready to be developed. It even gets accurate on the level of the way the troops enter and exit the authentic tanks.

It seems like an average, run of the mill tactical RTS. What makes this stand out is the historical accuracy and precision that was put into development.

Battle Lord
Battle Lord is the stand-out title from 1C this year. Unfortunately the 2007 release date is a bummer. It is a fantasy adventure game that uses both real-time gameplay and turn-based gameplay. The world interaction is all done real time while the battles are done in a traditional turn-based. It looked good and the gameplay seemed promising with the use of real-time and turn-based gameplay.

Death to Spies
Like Theatre of War, Death to Spies is taking a historical approach to a third-person stealth action game. This title, called Smersh, in Russian means death to spies. Smersh also happened to be the name of a set of counterintelligence departments in the Soviet Army during World War II. They arrested traitors, spies and deserters.

The game is based on actual historic events. It has a lot of stealth aspects where you have to use the surrounding environment to complete your missions. It also incorporates a lot of common logic.

Whirlwind Vietnam
Whirlwind Vietnam is another historical flight sim that places you inside the cockpit of the American Huey helicopter used heavily during Vietnam. The environments are accurate and completely historical. Inside the cockpit you can operate multiple seats including the co-pilot and gunner. Unfortunately the Huey is the only vehicle you can pilot, so repetitive gameplay may be a concern.

You Are Empty
You Are Empty is a first person shooter set in a 1950s alternate universe. It takes place in a Soviet Union environment. In this town the Soviets tried to create a perfect town by engineering humans. The experiment went entirely wrong and now you have to fight your way through the town filled it mutants, including a giant mutated chicken. This one keeps some of 1C's obsession with history by including real soviet environments all the way down to authentic signs on the wall.