Long time lurker here, but somehow I felt the need to register for this. Outstanding review, thanks alot.

Nice review, Tom. Perhaps a later version/patch(es) will help CloD rise to the level that the Il2 franchise enjoyed. Until then it's hard not to feel a little disappointed in 1C's latest.

I surely do long for the days of MiG Alley, where a dynamic campaign worked fairly smoothly and you could jump in and fly one of the missions you helped the game engine plan out. Sure wish one of those could be placed into CloD. Heck, even a scripted day-by-day campaign that lets you work through the real Battle of Britain from a historical sense would be welcome.

An idea for the mod crowd: A campaign that follows the events in the book "Piece of Cake" (Phony War/Battle of France/Battle of Britain) and the fictious "Hornet Squadron", who are a vehicle to tell the overall story of the battle from one set of characters.

Having written reviews in the past for Combatsim, I have to say this was a tough nut to tackle. TC pulled it off quite well. The multiplayer section was a bit brief as its my favorite part to read about.

Ive tried the direct connect MP mode, this is how users would host their own MP missions without a dedicated server. Host supplies the IP and clients should be able to use that and play online. We can get Lobby/COOP mission to partially work. Host sees all A/C placed on the mission, but the Client does not. This DirectConnect mode does not seem to be ready for prime time.

In making a mission, one has to make sure there is a respawn site over a base to allow clients to create a plane or group of planes. We still cannot get clients to join flights already made that the Host can join and fly with. Plus, the clients still dont show up with a player count under the flag of their choosing. Only the Host shows up as 1 Player, the client shows up as 0.

Once in the Host and Clients are able to fly together, the stability and lag are reasonable, although I did see some jitter when flying in close formation. Its not near perfect as with IL2-46, Lomac and DCS. Its just more evidence as to what TC had said as an overall situation, that being IL2-COD has much potential but is hobbled with some serious GUI and game play issues. I remember early IL2-46 as being troublesome too, so perhaps they will work these out over time (and pay for patches/addons).

Overall, Im OK with IL-COD, but the folks I fly with continue to fly IL2-46 as a squadron level platform until COD proves itself as equal or better than.

Great review Tom. You captured the highs and the lows very well and kept it subjective, putting your opinions about the devs/publishers in the commentary piece (which was good too).

As I play through and document the two campaigns ( http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3295421/1.html ) it confirms as you say, 'The campaign feels like an afterthought, and it shows.' I don't actually describe all the bugs and errors in each mission but they are legion...here is just a sample from my latest hand scribbled notes:

... "raf mission 6, float plane bounces on the sea like cork when destroyed..."
... "raf mission 7, fire truck drives into parked aircraft waiting to take off, meaning rest of aircraft do not take off, raf aircraft airborne just circle airfield and never intercept target..."
... "raf mission 8, briefing says player is transferring to Biggin, but it is Manston...aircraft accompanying player to Manston lands at Ford instead..."

It beggars belief that a dev with any common sense would so undervalue the long term drawing power of good campaigns or a good campaign engine, especially the devs of IL2 series which has been kept alive, in large part, by a huge library of user created missions, campaigns and dynamic campaign engines.

Maybe they just expected the community to do the job for them again this time?

Well written article. Good flow. Nice and neutral.

Claiming that the Beaufighter was develop from the Blenheim would be like claiming that the P-51 was developed from the P-40
It would have been nice if the auther had distinguished between the different types of Spitfire. My personal experiance are that only the IIa are a dream to fly due to the constant speed prop and the full variable pitch. The rest are of the Spits are lemons.
I find the authers stall issue on the Hurricane hard to replicate. I have flown 70% of my time with it and yet to get into a flatspin. The Hurricane should be flown Horizontal and not like a Spit. Getting out of an ordenary spin seems easy enough although I must admit that the Spit is easier. (THR: 0%; Full opposite rudder of the spin; A little negative nosedown.)

Good article. I enjoyed it

As others have said, very good and balanced writeup that helped me (probably) take the plunge with this sim.

A few comments:

Seems to me Rise of Flight probably has better terrain graphics and a nicer color palette. CoD isn’t that far off, and hopefully the update work-in-progress will resolve the issues I'm seeing. Some players have stated that games like Wings of Prey have better terrain graphics and in some respects it does, but CoD’s map is huge compared to Wings of Prey, so comparisons are somewhat unfair

In fairness CoD's map is probably (provided it's like any other WWI sim) also a lot smaller than CoD, plus it does not have to deal (provided it's like any other WWI sim) with similar altitudes which also translates into viewing distances and other CPU and GPU crunching.

The AI is another confusing portion of this game. I have seen the AI do some amazing things, fly very well and be out-and-out deadly at times. Other times I have been able to fly around lazily with no risk of being attacked. I understand that not all pilots are equal in real life but sometimes the enemy is flat out brain dead. I’ve seen some level flying while unloading my machine guns with the AI demonstrating little effort to resist. Likewise I’ve seen enemy bombers all of sudden outrun my Hurricane ... You can’t rely on your AI teammates because they seem to ignore orders or requests. Yet at other times you can get a real fight out of them. There is an AI in there and I think it might be pretty good. But like other components of CoD, it needs fixing.

This sounds very much like the old Il-2 AI. While a bit disappointing, it could also mean that the old tricks work like "resetting" your wingmen by giving them the Break-Rejoin command at regular intervals.

Another thing that stands out in this very well-rounded review is how different people's playing styles are. I mostly play quick missions, so campaigns and multiplayer aren't major issues for me. However I care very much about AI, FM, and DM and I was of course hoping for CoD to be a significant improvement from Il2 in those areas. According to the review it looks like it probably is overall, although it could be better.

Fairly presented and detailed review

I like CoD. Its worth the price. But, I'm not "driven" to fly it in its current state.

My main gripe is the easy to induce "stuttering" -- an immersion killer for me. With the right in-game settings, I was able to eliminate nearly all stuttering. However, it is there, lurking, and limiting how I can setup the game. No excuses -- games/simulations should not stutter, period.

Hi

A good review but it should carry a warning. I purchased the Collector's Edition from Ubisoft for their amazing offer price £18 last week. All the bugs have not been sorted yet and your reiew could list workarounds for the most common. For example, all dials etc in the cockpit were fuzzy and discoloured and thus flying was not possible. That is until I came across a suggestion that if you do not select the anti epilepsy feature the problem does not appear. I am still trying to find a way of sorting out how to assign all the controls in a sensible way - so I can start the engines and make all the adjustments for take off. It would be useful to find a standard solution as the manual provided with the simulation has an overview only.

Otherwise I am impressed by this simulation.

Best Wishes and I hope to join you all in the sky very soon