Birds of Steel

Birds of Steel (蒼の英雄 Birds of Steel) is a combat flight simulator video game created by Gaijin Entertainment and published by Konami. It was released in March 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game includes more than one hundred non-fictional planes, twenty historical missions, and hundreds of procedural missions over sixteen different locations, including Pearl Harbor and Wake Island. It has single player, four player cooperative, and online multiplayer modes. Birds of Steel provided the base work for Gaijin Entertainment's MMO game War Thunder. The game consists of three difficulty settings, which change the way planes are flown: Simplified, an arcade play style, Realistic, a mix between an arcade play style and a simulation play style, and lastly Simulator, in which the planes handle as closely to real life as possible. A.I. difficulty is not affected by the selected play style.

Gameplay
Birds of Steel gives players command over famous warbirds of the World War II period, such as the F4F Wildcat and the A6M Zero. Players are allowed to choose their difficulty level before entering a battle, which only effects the flight parameters for the player's aircraft and not the difficulty of the AI. The choices of limited ammunition and fuel are selected separately, regardless of the difficulty level.

Simplified

Simplified uses an arcade-like physics model, e.g. the plane can never enter a stall or a spin and there are no aerodynamic effects such as wind turbulence and propeller torque. There are also no g-force effects on the plane or pilot, and the aircraft won't experience flutter when diving. Activating the throttle, or WEP (War Emergency Power), provides a major boost in flight speed. However, abusing WEP can cause the engine to overheat, causing a short delay before it can be used again.

Realistic

Realistic offers a far greater challenge than Simplified, as the player can enter a stall or a spin easily if reckless with the controls. g-forces are applied in this mode; the pilot can black- or red-out from pulling sustained G's for extended periods, resulting in the screen becoming filled with either color, obscuring the player's vision. Aircraft can experience flutter and break apart if flying above their historical structural limits, and can rip their wings if pulled too hard, especially at high speed. WEP is not available for all aircraft, and doesn't provide as significant a boost in speed.

Simulator

Reception
The Xbox 360 version received "generally favorable reviews", while the PlayStation 3 version received above-average reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN Australia praised the graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal but said that the presentation lacked a little spark. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of one nine, one eight, one seven, and one eight for a total of 32 out of 40.