Apache Air Assault

The Good
The best thing in this game its quite good and spectacular graphics. It is very eye-catching when you launch a rocket salvo against the enemy and the rockets' smoke fogs the view for a moment. And when they impact there is a very decent explosion and dust clouds on the ground. Or if you hit a tree or a building it collapses instantly. And it is good to have a game that fills out the void in this genre with choppers since lately there are not so many of such stuffs. The atmosphere is again very good for you can hear the pilots acknowledging their orders or other of their radio chatters, the sound of the blades and if you're using the cockpit views you can see the dashboard or your gunner's helmet in front of you. And you can control the gun manually as well if you want and you change it's view to infrared or F.L.I.R. You can also switch to view the impact of your missiles if you're holding the fire button. And it is good that if you go behind the mountains or hills the missiles which were locked on you miss their targets. What makes the game more enjoyable there different locations and weather types in the game although the meteorology doesn't have any effect on the gun-ship's control. So it has everything to make you believe you're controlling an Apache at least that concerns the graphics and the atmosphere. And there some features that are rather just questions of convenience: for example the colour of the HUD is changeable.

The Bad
Unfortunately other things are not so good. For this game is basically an arcade helicopter shooter and not an old fashioned simulator. Though the game sometimes wants to be like that. For the controls are very simulation like: you can roll, turn etc. with the Apache. So it makes the chopper bit difficult to control which wouldn't be a problem, but the game still requires fast, arcade moves against the enemy. And due to this the game becomes very frustrating sometimes for you make yourself a sitting duck in front of the enemy. And of course in 'realistic' difficulty this problem becomes really annoying. The other thing is the HUD, in 'realistic' it's showing everything you need to know to control the gunship: altitude, speed etc, in easy mode you can only see your cross-hair, weapons and altitude. Or the other thing is that concerns the dilemma of being a simulator or arcade game that your weapons if you run of them they reload themselves after a certain amount of time however you can land on helipads as well where you are able to replenish your arsenal with less time but sometimes these pads are in the enemy territory. The other thing are the missions. For long a time you get some boring missions nothing really exciting in them then you get some tasks that are really hard and difficult. Although there are assignments that are rich in ideas. The last thing is the move of the enemy and ally infantry. It's ridiculous for they have very primitive animation.

The Bottom Line
This game is very good if you're expecting something like Ace Combat or HawX. Not so good but not worse than those ones. It's not a real chopper simulator (even if it's sometimes wants to be one) which is not a problem and sometimes you get very witty objectives as well.