History VideoGame / Il2Sturmovik

** In most wider releases, Luftwaffe aircraft will not carry the black and white ''hakenkreuz'', nor do Finnish planes do not carry the historical Von Rosen cross, a light blue swastika on a white circle (despite the fact that the adoption of the Finnish roundel cross predates the adoption of the swastika by the NSDAP by several years, and in any case was done to honor the Swedish count Erik Von Rosen's donation of aircraft during the Finnish Civil War). Soviet aircraft use a five-pointed red star roundel, which could have unsavory connotations for many (though, aside from being Russian-produced software, similar stars are make up the roundels of current Chinese, Vietnamese, Kazakh, North Korea, Belorussian, Tajik and of course, Russian Air Forces, making it a very common element). While the original Russian software release features German and Finnish swastikas, other countries, such as Japan, were given modified or otherwise inaccurate insignia. In any case, [[GameMod Multiple texture pack options exist to make corrections or allow the player their choice of roundels]] among insignia assets, and for aircraft skins (which are separately handled), many community-created skins for aircraft also prefer historical accuracy over [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory inoffensiveness]].

** The German planes never carry the black swastika and the Finnish planes do not carry the historical Von Rosen cross, a light blue swastika on a white circle. This, despite the fact that the adoption of the Von Rosen cross predates the adoption of the swastika by the NSDAP by several years, and in any case was done to honor the Swedish count Erik Von Rosen, who had donated planes to Finland during their civil war. Soviet planes in the same game still carry the red star, which of course has unsavory connotations for many. In the real world, the Russian military still use the red star, despite the Soviet Union having been gone for 20 years, although the version now carried by the Russian Air Force, at least, is a red star outlined in white and blue, thus including the three colors of the Russian Federations's flag. The original Russian version of the game has both German and Finnish swastikas. Russians don't seem to mind. Naturally, many fan-made skins for German and Soviet aircraft also prefer historical accuracy over [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory inoffensiveness]].

* OldSchoolDogfight: ''Well, [[CaptainObvious duh]].'' The series is set during a time period where planes really did carry only line-of-sight weapons and got into dogfights regularly.

* WideOpenSandbox: While every mission (whether standalone or a campaign/career one) has a fixed set of main and optional objectives and recommended waypoints, the gameplay and your route to victory can be completely nonlinear, based on the player's own preferences. The stock campaigns have a marked "choose your own adventure" angle and the two different mission editors (one for quick battles and one for full missions) can leave the player in a fun QuicksandBox.

* ShownTheirWork: ''[[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything And how!]]'' This game is among the most realistic combat flight simulators ever made, particularly if you fly on max difficulty, and the devs are studiously careful about historical accuracy as well.

* TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything:
** You can customize your pilot in ''Cliffs of Dover'', selecting various flight suits and other equipment like life jackets and parachutes. You can also select [[SchmuckBait not to wear a parachute]], in which case bailing out causes your pilot to flail around as he plummets to his death.
** In the original 2000s series, if you crash land or bail out while behind enemy lines, you get a message that you've been captured and had become a POW.

* AirborneAircraftCarrier: Yes, this [[ShownTheirWork incredibly accurate]] game managed to work in one of these. . . in a way. The Zveno "parasite fighter" is one of the featured aircraft.

* AutoPilotTutorial: ''[[GetOnWithItAlready Seriously...]]'' On the bright side, these tutorial vids also have a fair share of [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome interesting and action-packed moments]] and very often even [[RuleOfFunny a joke or two]].

''IL-2 Sturmovik'' is a WorldWarTwo [[SimulationGame Combat Flight Simulator]] for the PC. It was originally started by Russian game developer [[http://blogs.vizerra.com/.a/6a0120a6e0c3e9970b014e87fa541b970d-pi Oleg Maddox]] as a hobby garage project featuring the famous Soviet [[EnsembleDarkhorse ground attack plane]], which also lent the game its name. [[ArtifactTitle It was kept even after the game got heavily expanded and commercially released]], [[CashCowFranchise spawning this juggernaut of a series shortly afterward.]] The branding has stuck to the point where the formerly-titled sequel ''Storm of War: Battle of Britain'' [[MarketBasedTitle is now]] ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover''.

The game, along with its 3 main sequels and numerous expansion packs, features literally hundreds of planes (most of them flyable), dozens of detailed gameplay maps in every possible theater of the war and also the opportunity to fly as some of the less famous Axis and Allied powers (e. g. {{UsefulNotes/Finland}}, {{UsefulNotes/The Netherlands}}, {{UsefulNotes/Italy}}, {{UsefulNotes/Romania}}, {{UsefulNotes/Hungary}}, {{UsefulNotes/Slovakia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Australia}}, {{UsefulNotes/New Zealand}}, the [[{{UsefulNotes/France}} French]] and [[{{UsefulNotes/Poland}} Polish]] [[LaResistance resistance]]). The expansion pack ''IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946'' features several AlternateHistory campaigns [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cklXJA4HcQ with many American, German and Russian prototype planes]] that never made it into service during the war (many of them early jet fighters).

* ''Pacific Fighters (2004)'': The one OddlyNamedSequel, adding aircraft carriers and focusing chiefly on the Pacific theatre in all its entirety.

* ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey (2009)'': A console-exclusive title (though it got ported to PC as ''Wings of Prey'' shortly thereafter). Not officially part of the original series, but generally considered an AdaptationDistillation {{Spinoff}} of it for the console audience.

* AllThereInTheManual: The more detailed instructions on default keys, difficulty settings, flying and dogfighting can be found in the main manual. Then there's another separate manual which is basically a booklet that lists all of the game's flyable aircraft - with detailed information on a specific type's tech specs, weaknesses and strenghts, historical info and developer commentary, and pictures showing which cockpit readout and control is which (this last bit of info is useful for those players that want to fly a plane purely "on instruments", using the control panel's readouts and indicators as a {{diegetic interface}}.

* AutoPilotTutorial: ''[[GetOnWithItAlready Seriously...]]'' On the bright side, these tutorial vids also have a fair share of [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome interesting and action-packed moments]] and very often even [[RuleOfFunny a joke or two]].

* ComingInHot: The higher the realism settings, the higher the chance of returning to base with a barely flyable machine (or not returning at all). The game's manual even advises the player to drop any remaining bomb, rocket or fueltank payloads before attempting an emergency landing. If the bottom of your fuselage is seriously damaged, chances are that your undercarriage will literally fall to pieces once you try to deploy it for landing. With a bit of luck, you can still land though - [[CaptainCrash gliding slowly downward and skidding a bumpy ride on the fuselage]]. Of course, if you don't feel that skilled, [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim you can always just bail out with a parachute]].
* ContinueYourMissionDammit: The superiors in your flight or squadron will chastise you a bit if you steer too far away from the main waypoints of a given mission or from your fellow wingmen. Subverted in that they don't keep harping on about it ad nausea, nor do they reprimand you for it. They just alert you to not get lost or too far behind or too far ahead (since staying together as a group increases the chance to carry out the mission succesfully and within a realistic timeframe).

* DangerDeadpan: {{Subverted|Trope}} hilariously. Your fellow wingmen speak in a cool-headed, deadpan, professional manner most of the time - but just wait until you get into a particularly difficult dogfight or someone gets shot down... MoodWhiplash and RuleOfFunny ensues. One of the Japanese "shot down/bailing" quotes is a particularly [[{{Narm}} Narmtastic]] scream.

* FightingForAHomeland: The Finnish, French, Polish and Soviet air forces would be the most clear-cut examples. Many additional fan-made [[GameMod mods]] also feature pilots of foreign occupied nationalities serving in the RAF (e. g. Czechoslovak fighter and bomber pilots). The French, Polish and Finnish air forces also double as LaResistance - the French forces being the TropeNamer, of course...

* NoseArt : Both in the form of actual nose art and selectable skins for the planes. The markings on your plane depend on the nation/faction you're flying for and can be turned off if you wish.

* [[StormingTheCastle Storming The Airbase]]: Missions focusing on bombing enemy airfields and airbases, particularly their AA guns, supplies and parked aircraft.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The AI pilots' flight model is simplified, and even though this has been toned down in the many patches, they still don't suffer from blackouts or engine overheating. They also have superior performance in general, but thankfully this is not a problem in multiplayer...
** AI pilots - and AI gunners - are absolutely unaffected by turbulence and G-forces, which leads to a curious situation where the most dangerous opponents in single player mode are modest attack aircraft with a rear gunner, as they can perform evasive maneuvers whilst delivering a continuous stream of lethally accurate fire to your pilot's head. Whether this was intended to make the IL-2 itself more survivable (the real airplane suffered horrendous losses) is debatable.
* TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything:
** You can customize your pilot in ''Cliffs of Dover'', selecting various flight suits and other equipment like life jackets and parachutes. You can also select [[SchmuckBait not to wear a parachute]], in which case bailing out causes your pilot to flail around as he plummets to his death.
** In the original 2000s series, if you crash land or bail out while behind enemy lines, you get a message that you've been captured and had become a POW.
* [[SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou The IL-2 Is About to Strafe Your Tank]]

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade[=/=]HistoricalVillainUpgrade[=/=]VideoGameHistoricalRevisionism : While none of the canon (i.e. released) missions and campaigns allow you to do things as excessive as the bombing of Hiroshima, everything else is fair game and the political implications of fighting for a specific faction are barely ever brought up. The games don't focus on the politics of WWII, but on the personal experiences of common pilots. Given this focus, GrayAndGrayMorality abounds.

*** [[CrowningMomentOfFunny That's nothing compared to the mayhem of carpet bombing everything in sight with your infinite loadout of bombs]].

* [[OneManArmy One Man Air Force]]: Played straight only when you turn off Vulnerability, Limited Ammo and Limited Fuel.

** You can customize your pilot in ''Cliffs of Dover'', selecting various flight suits and other equipment like life jackets and parachutes. You can also select not to wear a parachute, in which case bailing out causes your pilot to flail around as he plummets to his death.

* AcePilot: Lots of RealLife aces and entire ace squadrons from the era. Also, YOU too can become a celebrated ace (at least in dynamic career campaigns), but you really need the guts and a lot of skill to achieve such status.

** Add 'luck' to the prerequisites. I personally once started off a fighter pilot campaign by shooting down five Japanese bombers in the first mission, taking no actual damage even though my plane was pelted with bullets from their defensive guns. Then, in my first ground attack mission, I took a single hit from an AA gun as I flew low to strafe a truck convoy. I was instantly killed.

%%* AllThereInTheManual

* AntiAir : Lots of various static and vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft weapons. Rookie pilots will quickly learn not to play hero and attack them head-on, instead trying out some evasive maneuvers before diving and spraying the target with a burst of explosive ammo (or rockets, if the plane is carrying any). AA guns are pretty much the ultimate nightmare while storming a heavily fortified enemy airfield and take some skill and practice to be effectively taken out, with minimal losses or damage on part of the player.

* {{Overheating}}: One of the many realism elements that can be turned on or off is the overheating of your aircraft's engine(s). Luckily, if you're engine has only just started overheating, you can always cool it down by simply lowering your speed (thus lowering the strees on your engine, until it cools down). And if worst comes worst and your engine catches fire, [[{{Lifelines}} you can quickly cool the engine with a key command assigned to the on-board extinguisher (roughly two doses available before you run out of extinguishing fluid)]].

The difficulty and accuracy of the flight mechanics are extremely scalable, making the game accessible to [[HardCore pros]] and amateurs alike. You can [[http://www.ch-hangar.com/SiteFiles/Images/il2settings.jpg easily customize the difficulty and realism]] of flight and air combat, turning the game either into a semi-realistic arcade dogfighter or a punishingly realistic NintendoHard flight sim. The game also offers a lot of freedom for creating custom missions and campaigns in it's simple and intuitive LevelEditor, and is generally opened to adding player-created custom content (including the possibility to add your own skins for the various aircraft or new music and sound files into the game). There's a giant fan community and tons of {{game mod}}s in addition to the official releases. It's no secret that part of the series' success lay in a dedicated modding community worldwide. A large part of the original modder projects even became official parts of the later sequels.

* HollywoodTactics: Just try dogfighting or doing an attack run in the way it's usually portrayed in most films, and you'll soon find yourself hurdling

* InVehicleInvulnerability: Pilot kills are actually one of the best ways to shoot down enemy aircraft.

''IL-2 Sturmovik'' is a WorldWarTwo [[SimulationGame Combat Flight Simulator]] for the PC. It was originally started by Russian game developer Oleg Maddox as a hobby garage project featuring the famous Soviet [[EnsembleDarkhorse ground attack plane]], which also lent the game its name. [[ArtifactTitle It was kept even after the game got heavily expanded and commercially released]], [[CashCowFranchise spawning this juggernaut of a series shortly afterward.]] The branding has stuck to the point where the formerly-titled sequel ''Storm of War: Battle of Britain'' [[MarketBasedTitle is now]] ''IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover''.

* GreyAndGrayMorality[=/=]MyCountryRightOrWrong[=/=]WorthyOpponent: Part of the appeal of the campaigns is that they focus on the life and work of military pilots from their own personal perspective, [[AvertedTrope instead of]] [[AuthorFillibuster shoehorning in a discussion on the politics of the war into a mission's backstory]]. The regimes that some pilots serve might be reprehensible dictatorships, but it's not ultimately the pilots' fault, nor are most of them gleeful, monstrous killers. Sometimes, the nations and factions portrayed are caught in decidedly non-black-and-white political situations (e.g. Finns), and often, even "the good guys" have to carry out examples of IDidWhatIHadToDo in order to score a victory that might end the war sooner. As far as the player is concerned, [[MyCountryRightOrWrong everybody is just doing his job]] [[ShowDontTell and experiencing first-hand]] [[SceneryPorn that even among the clouds]], WarIsHell.

%%* GreyAndGrayMorality[=/=]MyCountryRightOrWrong[=/=]WorthyOpponent

* ColorCodedArmies[=/=]ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Axis planes are always blue and Allied planes always red on the map and dogfighting HUD. The basic colour designation never changes, regardless of which faction you're playing for.
** This can get ''very'' confusing. Flying as a Pacific pilot and trying to remember that Red contacts are Allies, and blue contacts are Japanese planes, takes some getting used to after being conditioned to associate the US Pacific Air Force with blue planes, and Japan with its token red sun flag.

** A humorous subversion appears in the case of smaller countries allied or subservient to the Axis powers. Romania, Slovakia and Hungary have stylized aircraft crosses unique to the era of their WWII regimes. These ultimately have the same connotations as Nazi Germany's swastikas, but the censors seemingly took a double standard approach in their case (probably because of the "MyFriendsAndZoidberg" status of the countries in the Axis). Anyway, this leaves these countries having more period-accurate insignia than the bigger players in the war. The insignia aren't completely uniform though : The skins donated to ''Forgotten Battles'' by Slovak modders feature both the roundels of the [[TheQuisling WWII regime]] and the local LaResistance.
* OldSchoolDogfight: The original version, being set during the time period where planes really did carry only line-of-sight weapons and dogfight regularly.

* SomeDexterityRequired: The flight models are generally very twitchy and unforgiving of hamfisted flying. If you don't handle the stick and rudder with finesse, you WILL get the aircraft into a nasty stall or spin that you can only recover from after massive altitude loss-if you don't get shot up while trying to recover. In addition, gunnery is very difficult and will require a steady stick.
** This is especially true if you turn on all the realistic settings. The whole game can be controlled easily via keyboard, but joysticks are generally the better controller on higher and more professional difficulties.
%%* [[StormingTheCastle Storming The Airbase]]

* TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything: You can customize your pilot in ''[=CloD=]'', selecting various flight suits and other equipment like life jackets and parachutes. You can also select not to wear a parachute, in which case bailing out causes your pilot to flail around as he plummets to his death.

%%* EasyLogistics

%%* HistoricalHeroUpgrade[=/=]HistoricalVillainUpgrade[=/=]VideoGameHistoricalRevisionism
%%* HollywoodTactics
* HyperspaceArsenal: Only if you turn off Limited Ammo in the realism/difficulty settings .

* InVehicleInvulnerability: Pilot kills are one of the best ways to shoot down enemy aircraft, actually.

%%* PinballProjectile
* RammingAlwaysWorks: It kinda does, but is almost impossible to achieve properly. And if you don't have Vulnerability turned off, [[StupidSacrifice it usualy means curtains for you as well as the enemy]].

* SmallReferencePools: One of the selling points of the series is that it focuses on a lot of the [[TheGreatestHistoryNeverTold criminally overlooked]] theatres of the second world war.

* SuicidalOverconfidence: Chase a bomber close enough and they'll drop their payload and start evasive action, sometimes even before you start firing. Damaged fighters will disengage and try emergency landing. Every plane crew will bail out when enough damage is done, even when it's still flying.

[[caption-width-right:350:In Soviet Russia, [[{{SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou}} Sturmovik shoots you]] !]]

The game, along with its 3 main sequels and numerous expansion packs, features literally hundreds of planes (most of them flyable), dozens of detailed gameplay maps in every possible theater of the war and also the opportunity to fly as some of the less famous Axis and Allied powers (e. g. {{UsefulNotes/Finland}}, {{UsefulNotes/The Netherlands}}, {{UsefulNotes/Romania}}, {{UsefulNotes/Hungary}}, {{UsefulNotes/Slovakia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Australia}}, {{UsefulNotes/New Zealand}}, the [[{{UsefulNotes/France}} French]] and [[{{UsefulNotes/Poland}} Polish]] [[LaResistance resistance]]). The expansion pack ''IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946'' features several AlternateHistory campaigns [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cklXJA4HcQ with many American, German and Russian prototype planes]] that never made it into service during the war (many of them early jet fighters).

[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou}} In Soviet Russia]], [[{{SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou}} Sturmovik shoots you]] !]]

* AllThereInTheManual

* BigBulkyBomb: There are at least several enormous bombs that one can load onto an aircraft[[note]]The biggest in the game, excluding {{Game Mod}}s, is the Russian 5,000-kilogram (11,000-pound) FAB-5000, which can only be carried by the non-player-flyable Petlyakov Pe-8 heavy bomber (although a recent patch makes the Pe-8 player-flyable)[[/note]]; the blasts from these are so big that, depending on the computer hardware running the game, their detonations can ''slow down the game''. And then there's their destructive power...

* CoolPlane: If you're a WorldWarTwo military aircraft buff, you'll consider these games as outright TechnologyPorn.

* GreyAndGrayMorality[=/=]MyCountryRightOrWrong[=/=]WorthyOpponent
* HighAltitudeBattle: Not as many as you would think, though a few missions involving bomber-busting start off in quite high altitudes.

* NoCampaignForTheWicked: ''Spectacularly'' averted. The series in its full entirety deliberately [[TheGreatestHistoryNeverTold features every possible nation that played at least some role]] in WorldWarTwo aerial warfare, both on the Allied and Axis side.
** Until recently, it was basically inverted, with regard to the Western Allies. Later expansions changed this, but it still holds to a degree--for example, there is still no campaign for USAAF fighters in Western Europe. (There is one for them in the Pacific, but it's not nearly as in-depth as the ones for the USN or USMC.)

* NoSwastikas : The German planes never carry the black swastika and the Finnish planes do not carry the historical Von Rosen cross, a light blue swastika on a white circle. This, despite the fact that the adoption of the Von Rosen cross predates the adoption of the swastika by the NSDAP by several years, and in any case was done to honor the Swedish count Erik Von Rosen, who had donated planes to Finland during their civil war. Soviet planes in the same game still carry the red star, which of course has unsavory connotations for many. In the real world, the Russian military still use the red star, despite the Soviet Union having been gone for 20 years, although the version now carried by the Russian Air Force, at least, is a red star outlined in white and blue, thus including the three colors of the Russian Federations's flag. The original Russian version of the game has both German and Finnish swastikas. Russians don't seem to mind. Naturally, many fan-made skins for German and Soviet aircraft also prefer historical accuracy over [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory inoffensiveness]].

* OldSchoolDogfighting: ''Well, [[CaptainObvious duh]]...''
* {{Roboteching}}: Some of the German fighters in ''1946'' (the Ta-152C, Ta-183, and Lerche) carry X-4 guided missiles. Of course, as the setting saw the beginning of guided weaponry, these missiles have to be manually guided to their targets.
** A recent patch for ''1946'' adds in several more actual WWII-era guided weapons (namely the German Hs-293 anti-ship missile and Fritz-X radio guided bomb, and the American Razon guided bomb and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_(guided_bomb) Bat]] anti-ship guided bomb). Although the first three also have to be manually guided, the Bat is a "fire-and-forget"-type weapon.

* ShownTheirWork: ''[[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything And how!]]''

* [[StormingTheCastle Storming The Airbase]]

* BizarreAndImprobableBallistics
* BulletsDoNotWorkThatWay
* CriticalExistenceFailure
* EasyLogistics

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade[=/=]HistoricalVillainUpgrade[=/=]VideoGameHistoricalRevisionism
* HollywoodTactics

* ImprobableAimingSkills
** Played straight by some individuals on multiplayer. There are people who can genuinely manage astonishing feats of virtual aerial gunnery.

* PinballProjectile