This is the best WWII combat flight sim out there at present..BAR NONE...It is the most complete WWII fighter pilot experience you will get....I have tried other WWII flight sims on the market and they are all very arcade like...This is the REAL DEAL...I have flown this sim over 1000 hours and I am still amazed at how real it feels, how good the landscape looks, the flight characteristics, the damage models, it is breathtaking!..and it is still being improved

When this sim originally came out it had flaws that put a lot of people off and gave bad reviews on sites like this. Unfortunately this has marred what is now quite literaly a brilliant sim. Its taken a while (2 years actually) but for those of us who gave this sim a second chance we have not been disappointed. For that reason I feel that I should make people aware of what they are missing if they don't get this game, but don't take my word for it..checkout the recent youtube videos..

The online experience is probably the best part of this game...To fight in the skies over Kent and the Pas-de-Calais in real time, scan the skies for enemy contacts, wing with a buddy and engage a deadly foe, it is exhilarating. You can change your shells to whatever shells were available at the time, you can change convergence settings so that your bullets hit exactly the same point, you fuel up to what amount you need which will influence your aircrafts balance and weight. The dogfight tactics are still the same from 1940, the flight characteristics are different for each aircraft and at different altitudes too....You can also fly bomber runs in 1940 bombers and take control of every manned gunning position as you try to fend off hungry attackers.

Even for new players there is plenty of help on youtube with 5 minute startup procedures, and how to dogfight in every flyable aircraft, you can be up and flying in just a few minutes. The best online server is ATAGS and they also have a website (link at bottom of this review)to checkout which is a must for new flyers with questions. Most importantly a large group of WWII aircraft enthusiast program techs have taken this sim and are constantly modifying it for a more complete experience. They are called the Team Fusion (TF) and they also use the ATAGS website as their base for discussion. The issues that once surrounded this game have now been resolved and the TF are now dedicating their time to making game enhancing changes like contrails and reflective cockpit canopys. Thats where this sim is at now.

If you want to fly online with us (and I would highly recommend the dogfighting online as its so much more full on than offline)...you must install the patches that can be found on the ATAGS website..and also for any questions...link to website here:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/forum.php

So my advice is to ignore any review earlier than 2013 as Cliffs Of Dover is as different now to when it was released as night and day and is nowhere near comparable with those early reviews.

This sim is the best WWII filight sim I have ever flown and I have over 25 years experience in flight sims from way back in the 80's until now. The game in itself had some issues that made alot of people put this sim back on the shelve (I almost did as well) But the community rallied, a mod team was formed under the name Team Fusion and this sim came back to life and went way above and beyond it's expectations. The realism and immersion are top notch and the community is one of the best in the gaming world and very helpful and patient with newbies. Even now in early 2014 the game is still being modded by TF and getting better all the time with new content, updated and better fps friendly graphics partical and visual effects. The flight models and damage models have been revised and more historical and are still getting better with each new patch. You can now take control of tanks and ground pound (wip) and the next mod release (coming very soon) you will be able to take control of flak guns and defend your base from enemy stafing it. This game will still be here in ten years no doubt and just keep getting better as it goes. The ATAG(AIR TACTICAL ASSAULT GROUP) server is the best host for this sim and there are always people on it willing to help newcomers out and get started. I have over 1200 hous on this awesome sim and will probably get to 10,000 plus in the next 5 to 10 years. And the best thing is the price is right, for under $20 you can't go wrong. Although now with the TF mods it sould be worth at least $60 and probably more. I definitely recommend this sim to any flight enthusiest out there.

I owned a retail copy of IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 and enjoyed its gameplay and realism quite a lot, enough to forgive the clunky user interface and spotty performance, to be expected in an obscure flight sim from 2006. Finding this 2011 release of IL-2 Cliffs of Cover on Steam, I had hoped for a more polished experience, but was left terribly frustrated after hours of simply attempting to get the game to run properly. When a game is made widely available on Steam, from a huge publisher as Ubisoft, I should not be expected to need to manually edit a bunch of .config and .ini text files buried deep within the installation directories just to get it to run! Yes, there is apparently a strong user community whom have created mods and patches to make this a much more playable game, but, again, a full-release paid-for title on Steam should not require any of this. There are early-access and pre-alpha release games that perform and play much more reliably than this. If you're willing to spend hours scraping online forums for user mods, configuration editing instructions and fooling with text-file jibberish, then perhaps you might find some enjoyment with this game. However, you shouldn't have to jump through those hoops, and this game shouldn't even be for sale on Steam. Remember, you can't get a refund.

There isn't a WWII sim out there that comes close to the CloD experience. The game was years in development and it shows through in the incredible amount of detail. Everything, from the finest cockpit detail to the huge expanse of the map is a real labour of love. The overall effect is nothing short of stunning.

Now that word is finally getting out that Cliffs of Dover is fixed, more and more people are joining the community every day and the online community is thriving.

Ignore the one star reviews of the buggy release version - the game runs smooth as silk with the latest TF patches, and I've yet to experience a launcher crash at all.

See you in the Skies ~S~

This game is a bit hard to review as there is the game itself and then there is the game with the Team Fusion mod/patches. So which to review? I'll go with the TF mod version as it's what you'll find on the multi servers. The original game suffered from a lot of performance issues, these mods/patches have cured that and it is a completely different (in a good way) game than without it.

While the single player experience is a bit ho-hum, there are other various other mission packs you can install if that is your sort of thing.

The best part of the game to me is on ATAG's multiplayer server. While the settings are Full Real, they aren't so complicated as to make it overly hard to learn in a short period of time and the community over there is extremely helpful so you can get off the ground and up in the air in no time.

My only wish right now is that Steam would include the Workshop for this game to make it easier for those who may not know about the game saving Team Fusion mod to get it and also install it (there are helpful videos describing the steps though over at the ATAG site).