Birds of Steel (PS3)

The best PS3 game you've never heard of! A real gem of a game, deserves to be better known. I ordered Birds of Steel after falling in love with the playable demo I stumbled on in the PS Store. I was looking for an alternative to my games of choice - Pro Evo, Tiger Woods, GTA, COD, and F1. When i got Birds of Steel I played nothing else for a few months, it is utterly absorbing, if you like a challenge you will love this. 'COD' of the skies in terms of heart pounding on-line combat, not many game get the heart rate up like Birds of Steel! For a change of pace you can fly-out on your own, and practice your flying whilst exploring the several huge maps. The Russian developers Gaijin have clearly taken a lot of pride in this game, it drips with WW2 authenticity, the graphics and sound are stunning, the game physics are excellent. Online is fun, but like most games, noobs will find it difficult to cope at first, but the XP rewards (you get some just for taking part) make it worth while, because you can start buying the 100 or so WW2 planes to have in your hangar. This is a gem of a game, one of my all time favorites.

Birds of steel is a good game as it offers hours more single player game play than just the campaign. The game could be more diverse however and more single player orientated as it requires you to play online (with minimal players playing) in order to quickly get new aircraft and to unlock skins and emblems in order to make full use of the customisation in the game. The biggest draw back for me is the fact that War thunder (on PC) which is a better game is free to play and offers a lot more. In comparison, this game feels like an alpha for War thunder.

Just a very small review, briefly expaining why you should buy B.O.S. If you enjoyed Il-2 Sturmovik, you will go nuts for this ! B.O.S is bigger, better, and more fun ! What makes this game great is that now you can go on dive-bombing and torpedo launching campaigns, also you can land to repair and restock ammo, this feature was not included on Il-2, it adds to the tension and excitement greatly. Other plus point are that people actually play this game online, and the games are a blast, if a little difficult. Battle damage is vastly improved with now over 100 areas on each plane that can break or go wrong !!! New planes from over 100 unlockables included in the game are Curtis Kittyhawk, P-38 Lightning, He-162. My only gripe is why didn't they include the P-47 Thunderbolt ? Maybe it did not serve in the specific missions in the game ? But all in all B.O.S is an amazing game, even worth buying just for the Pearl Harbour counterattack mission in which the player controls x4 Hellcats against Japanese destroyers etc, just epic ! Can't wait for the dlc :)

Well this product although good will annoy you slightly, let me explain with bulleted good and bad points: Good points: #The Games graphics are brilliant. #The Physics Engine is good. #The Aeroplanes fly brilliantly. # The selection of Aeroplanes that you can fly is fantastic. # The Game and Missions are varied in difficulty (Simplified = Easy, Realistic = Medium and Simulator = Hard) and Diversity (types: Bombing, Head to Head Dogfights, online modes etc). # The number of Missions (plenty to choose from). # The customizing aspect where you customize the Decals on the Aeroplanes. # The fact you can fly as the Allies or Axis # The destruction of the Aeroplanes as in bits falling off and the Aeroplanes being made harder to fly once damaged. # The fact that the bots fill in the online gaps. There are a lot more good points in fact they out way the Bad point but i won't list them all as you will discover them if you buy the game yourself. Bad point: # The Currency used to buy the new planes in the hanger is hard to come by and quick to spend, you earn it by ranking up, by playing certain missions (dynamic campaign) or online against other players but this comes with its own difficulties what i mean is ...... yes if you verse other players you earn it quicker about 1000 or more per kill, each aeroplane is worth about 9000 to 13000 depending on its size (some cheaper some more expensive than stated), if your shot down online its costs about an 18th of the aeroplanes cost for example a Hurricane Mk1 to buy is 9961ish, To repair its 691ish (roughly). Although points are awarded for every kill you make its shooting down the other players that makes it hard to gain especially on a laggy server. But this one bad point is not enough to call it a bad game because in short it isn't, in fact it's a fantastic game i would recommend it if you enjoy Fight simulators or you like world war 2 aeroplanes or you fancy yourself as a pilot that world war 2 missed out on or you just fancy a new game for Saturday night crash outs, this is one of those games for you. Oh and one final thing, if you're one of those who bought 'IL2 Sturmovik birds of prey' for games console (like me) than you should get this and then you'll realise that this game is tons better than IL2 get it you'll see what I mean (although the theme tune will sound familiar to you).

Boring

Sorry, couldn't agree with most reviewers!. I'm an experienced flight sim user but found this game disappointing. Scratchy graphics, aircraft difficult to control and poor audio. Nothing like IL Sturmovik ii.

Good game ,sound and graphics are good Value item

If you want a proper flight sim (and there are few true sims on most consoles) this is the one to get. Its decent looking, has intuitive controls, is smooth online, and actually has manual take off and landing (why this is normally missed from console games i don't know. Nursing your spitfire back to an aircraft carrier half on fire and looking like a swiss cheese, whilst wondering if you can land it without killing the pilot really ramps up the tension). Its pretty much the Gran Tourismo of the flight genre as there are loads of planes to unlock, each with there own unique handling and dog fighting traits. The difficulty levels offer everything from noob to ultra sim geek where half the battle is avoiding putting the plane in a spin. The dog fighting is fairly decent but could have been better in terms of the visuals of the enemy at close range and is also pretty samey after a few sessions. There is a good mission creator but campaign is quite short. The longevity of this game will depend on how prepared you are to do fairly similar missions, but if you are really into this type of game the mission editor means its pretty much as long as you want it to be. All in all its worth a purchase if your a fan of the genre but to be honest i stopped playing it after 2 weeks and expected to be playing it way longer. ME3 co op is just much more fun! N.B. I paid extra with Amazon to get it delivered on its release day but it didnt arrive. Amazon would not refund the extra postage and just gave me a vaguely patronising e-mail in response to my complaint. If you want games on their release date you would be better off buying it the old fashioned way.