From mistake to a winner

IL-2 Forgotten Battles
Ubi Soft http://www.ubisoft.com
http://www.il2sturmovik.com

By Capt Jason Logue

Forgotten Battles now has a patch to fix its resource problems.

Competition

We have a copy of IL2 Forgotten Battles (PC) and Conflict Desert Storm II Back to Baghdad (XBox) up for grabs this edition. Entries should be e-mailed to ADFgamesmen@telstra.com with the name of the game you would like to win in the subject line. Please, only one entry per person, subsequent entries will be discarded. Please include your full name and mailing address in the e-mail or your entry won't be accepted. Congratulations to our recent winners. SOFII: J Beeser, Sydney, D Spence, Sydney, P Spiranac, Brisbane. Medieval Total War: Viking Invasion P Phillipi Melbourne.

Forgotten Battles was released a few months ago after a very strange gestation. It was originally slated to be an expansion to the phenomenal IL2 Sturmovik by Ubi Soft and Maddox Games.

Fans of the original were keenly following the development of Forgotten Battles - it would offer many of the things they craved in the original as well as more of the high-quality work Maddox had made such an impact with.

Somewhere things went sour. Instead of being released as an add-on, Forgotten Battles was packaged as a stand-alone game. Then to add to the mystery it was sold at the price of an expansion pack.

Fans soon realised why, however, instead of the polished performer that was Sturmovik, Forgotten Battles was buggy, was an absolute system resource hog and quickly gained a reputation of being in dire need of some programming help.

For that reason I've held off on reviewing Forgotten Battles until Ubi Soft released a patch to cure the most alarming problems. About a month ago the patch hit the street and there has been another smaller update since finally giving gamers and hard-core simulator pilots alike the program they were hoping for.

IL2 Forgotten Battles adds Hungary and Finland to the aerial combat mix as well as adding several new planes that owners of the original (myself included) were crying out for. Despite what anyone may care to tell you, the most important of these is without doubt the Stuka. OK I'll admit I'm a fan of the big gull-winged monster.

In all, Forgotten Battles adds 30 new flyable aircraft (some are just different variants of the same plane) and a further 25 AI-controlled targets, I mean aircraft. As well, you can still get all the aircraft from Sturmovik if it is installed, including those released as free add-ons after release. All up, there are more than 125 aircraft, of which about 80 are flyable.

Also included is a dynamic campaign generator, something sorely missing from the first release, enhanced graphics and animations and five new maps adding the Hungarian and Finnish terrain to the game.

With the release of the patch, Oleg Maddox and his crew have turned Forgotten Battles from a mistaken release to a complex, detailed and importantly eminently playable sim for PC users.

Ubi Soft recommends a PIII800 or better, at least 256MB RAM, 32MB 3-D card, 1.1GB hard drive space and Direct X 8.1 to play the game. To enjoy it, I recommend doubling the key specifications.