1C Company and Ubisoft announced a new combat flight sim today. Previously called Storm of War: Battle of Britain, IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover has key features such as “New aircraft”, “Flyable aircraft” including British, German and Italian planes, and “Non-flyable aircraft” of up to 13 different AI-controlled planeamajigs.
All jokes aside, this looks like the new World War II combat sim that people have been waiting for after Wings of Prey left many fans wanting. Expect 128 player air battles, customizable difficulty, DirectX 11 supported graphics, full component damage modeling, and a map ranging from London and southern England to Normandy and Belgium. Best of all, it will have a proper interactive training mode to get you up to speed. Gone are the days of using a 400-page Falcon 4.0 manual!
The Collector’s Edition will also contain glorious combat flight sim goodies of a bygone era, including a cloth pilot escape map of the area, a 150-page ring binder with pilot instructions, and “Pilot’s Notes on the Spitfire I Aeroplane, provided to RAF pilots during The Battle of Britain and reprinted from the RAF Museum original document.”
Cliffs of Dover will be out on March 25th in Europe, which probably means a March 22nd release in North America. It’s rumored to only have a one-time UbiDRM online activation. From the looks of this forum thread, this game is what was going to be the IL-2 series creator’s magnum opus. Regardless of the name on the box, that means it should be really, really good.
