Storm of War: Battle of Britain
Preview
This game will certainly revolutionise the flight simulator world
by Marko Susimetsä
previewed on PC
The flow of the battle
Storm of War: Battle of Britain will be playable both as a single-player as well as a multiplayer and according to the present information, the game will include at least 20 single-player and 10 multiplayer missions. Like the title of the game suggests, these missions will be flown in beautifully modelled regions between central England and northern France and will include also Belgium, from where the Italian AF pilots flew their missions.
You, as a player, can select whether you want to replay the history as it actually happened or allow your actions to affect the flow of the whole battle, so as to rewrite the history books. So, when you gain rank and command your own squadron into a dogfight, you'd better win more often than you lose if you play for the British side. Speaking about the leading of a squadron, Maddox Games has promised to improve the AI of the enemy and allied pilots, increasing the number of commands that you can give them and varying the possible actions taken by the pilots. Certainly it will seem more realistic to see a badly damaged enemy plane trying to flee the dogfight, rather than come at you and try to kill you until the end. Accordingly, the AI pilots will be as much affected by poor visibility during the night and inside clouds as you are.
The multiplayer side of the equation will allow at least 32 players to take part in the missions and will include simple dogfights, as well as cooperative and team play modes with the basic and special maps.
The beasts of war
Finally, a few tidbits of the planes you can fly and shoot at in the game. As in IL-2 series, Storm of War: Battle of Britain will only offer a portion of all the aircraft for the player to fly. On the RAF side, you will most certainly have a chance to fly at least Spitfire Mk.I, Hurricane Mk.I, Blenheim Mk.IV and Gladiator Mk.II, but you will see many more RAF aircraft models in the air flown by the AI, including the Beaufighter and additional Blenheim models. On the side of the Luftwaffe, you'll be able to fly such planes as Bf-109 E3, Bf-110 C4, He-111 H-2 and naturally the Junkers JU-87 Stuka. The Luftwaffe AI will have several other German plane models to play with as well, but also including Italian Fiat aircraft.
All the player pilotable planes and most enemy craft will have detailed damage modelling which will realistically model the effects of various kinds of damage to different parts of the plane, changing its flying qualities. All the player aircraft will also have realistic 3D cockpits, modelled after period photographs and remaining planes, providing a realistic and atmospheric experience for the player.
Waiting for the release
All of the above suggests that the game will demand quite a lot of the computer that it is played on and the Maddox Games' representative has been heard to state that 2GB of ram would be a good idea to have, in addition to otherwise up-to-date computer. The game will also hopefully support dual core processors, taking full advantage of the last bit of power of the modern gaming rigs. The original plans of Ubisoft were to release the game by the end of this year, but the present word is that it will come out in the first quarter of 2007. But when it does come out, Storm of War: Battle of Britain will certainly revolutionise the flight simulator world.
