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So, you haven't heard from me in two years at this blog but here I am again with my second blog entry in a single day..... is it luck? fate? Who knows but here goes.
For those that do not know me and those that even do, I have no real-life flight experience of any kind, my feelings of simulation are gathered from whether I feel like I could be doing this exact thing in reality as we are today, or in the near future, or the past. That should be the definition of simulation to the person who has little real-life experience on a certain topic they are trying to simulate. I do however, own every flight game for the Xbox 360 and the vast majority of them for the Xbox. I do not trade these games in, you could even find a few of them, even though not recent games, in my recent playlist because I enjoy flying. I enjoy simulation, I also enjoy arcade flight games. On my console I use gamepads as well I have a Saitek AV8-R joystick for the 360 that i use, I will touch on both for this particular review. On my PC I have a full yoke/throttle/pedal setup, as for games Flight Simulator, IL-2 of various titles and a few others. I do not play my PC that much at all anymore however, too much to keep updated.
I will not compare the title to other games, I tell you what I see, and what I feel, the menus/options and sometimes a play-by-play basis of me playing the game. That is how I review titles, enjoy.
Apache Air Assault is a game that came out in mid-November for the PC, PS3, and Xbox360. It is published by Activision, and developed by Gaijin Entertainment, who are the same people who brought us the prop-plane WWII simulation, IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey. There was little advertisement so you may not even know of its existance and with that I bring to you my point of view on the game to perhaps help in your decision to make a purchase.
The game does not begin with any type of cinematic to start with, it loads up, and comes to a title screen with a rather nice looking rotating Apache AH-64 sitting on a white/blue background telling you to push the start button. Doing so will give you the usual select a storage space and autosave warning, a short loading screen and you have the main menu of the game. The menu here gives the following options, Campaign, Free Flight, Squad Operations, Options and Extra. The screen itself has the main title, the menu, and there is another rotating helicopter as a background, however you can change this one by choosing the Extra option and going to Hangar. The helicopter you exit the Hangar viewing will be the one displayed on the main menu.
While I'm in the Extra menu let's touch on it for a moment.
- First you have the Hangar, where after unlocking each helicopter (AH-64D Longbow, AH-64X, AH-1, MQ-8B Fire Scout, and Mi-35 Hind), you may then select each, change the skin of each from the skins that you have unlocked, as well as apply up to 4 decals to the helicopter. You may rotate, resize, flip, mirror, move to anywhere, and even wrap the helicopter with each decal. There are many decals/skins to unlock from within the game to customize your helicopters.
- The second option is Statistics, which will show you number of missions completed, total time played, air targets destroyed and ground targets destroyed. The game does not keep track of individual stats for each helicopter.
- The third option is Leaderboards, which include Total Time Played, Targets Destroyed, Missions Completed, Kill Ratio, and Flawless Missions. These are online leaderboards.
- Option four is Replays, the game allows you to save ANY replay, online or offline, any game mode. You can then come to this section and review or delete any of those replays you have saved. Each replay is timestamped with date/time/level/time of day/weather/dificulty so they are easier to find, you cannot name the replays yourself.
- Next you have Encylopedia, from here you can retrieve detailed information on each Game Mode (Campaign, Squad Operations, Free Flight, Replay and Hangar), retrieve detailed information on each difficulty level and their differences which I will also touch on shortly. Information on the Controls is available, this is very detailed in explaining how to yaw and what yaw is how to pitch how to roll what they are etc etc. Includes information on Weapons/AI Gunner/Manual Gun Views/Views/Satellite View and how to use them with your controls. Finally it also gives you detailed information on all of the HUD and what each display tells you/means to you as you pilot your helicopter.
- Finally you have the Credits and an option to go back to the main menu.
Next up on the main menu you have the Options menu selection.
- First you have Game Options where you can set your default view between third-person, cockpit, cockpit(gunner), and virtual cockpit. You may also turn subtitles off or on, change the HUD color between several shades of green, orange, red, yellow, blue, white. You may turn vibration on or off and change the brightness of the screen. Also there is an option fro Gunner Time which allows you to set how many seconds the AI gunner will wait before taking over the guns after you've used them, you can turn this off or have it be 4/8 seconds.
- The second option is Sound Options, here you can set the music volume, music volume while in the menu, sfx volume, radio chatter volume, and speech and FMV volume.
- Third up you can Re-select your Storage Device.
- Finally you have the Controls options. From here you can select your control layout, the options are Default (gamepad), Cyborg FLY9, Saitek AV8-R, and Ace-Edge. Those last three are joysticks in case you were not aware. You cannot map the gamepad controls. However you do still have more options, you can Invert Y-Axis, Invert Camera Y-Axis, Invert Throttle Axis, Invert Y-Axis (Gunner), Swap the sticks (I recommend this if using a gamepad, for me it helped), turn off or on whether to control the gun turret when in zoom (I recommend yes, helps a lot after you get good at it). You can also set the roll, pitch, yaw, and zoom sensitivity sliders. Even though I could not map my gamepad, I did not find it too terribly difficult find something that I was comfortable with. That being said I much prefer and highly recommend using a joystick for this particular flight game, helicopters are.... to say the least... "different" monsters to tackle in the air.
Up from here are the 3 main modes of gameplay. Squad Operations, Free Flight, and Campaign of which I will talk about each separately but in that order.
The Squad Operations mode is your online gameplay. Don't let the title confuse you this is it. There are no adversarial mode types to tackle at all. Squad Operations are sorties (missions) designed for 2-4 players however you do have the option to do them solo or even locally with a co-op gunner. (I will touch more on the local-play when explaining Campaign). You may also set a lobby you create to private or public however you cannot designate specific number of slots as friends only. Of course you can always Quick Match or join someone elses game they have created. You may only join a lobby, not a game/mission already started. Other options for room setup include the mission you would like to do, and its difficulty level (Training, Realistic, Veteran - only unlocks after beating the Campaign). After you've created a room your options then consist of just changing the mission. Difficulty level changes require you to recreate the room.
All of the missions in Squad Operations mode are more basic than campaign however still quite involved/long and very much enjoyable. As well they can be quite difficult especially if you do not have 2, 3 or even 4 players. One of the missions is a race where you can shoot each other down, you also have missions where you take out a bunch of ground targets, escort a ship or transport, dog fight with other helicopters, etc., pretty much everything you get in the Campaign just a more distinct objective with generally harder difficulty due to you having 2-4 real players. There is even a mission where one-two players are drone helo's that paint targets in an area where the Apache would get shot down while the other players piloting the Apache's air strike the painted targets from far away with hellfire missiles. What difficulty levels you have beaten each mission on as well as your Player Score for each mission is kept track of and shown in the mission select screen. There are 13 Squad Operations all together.
Next we will touch on the Free Flight mode. This is a single-player only game mode, which is a real bummer because it would have been fantastic online. You may select from 10 different arenas which are taken from places within the Campaign. You can select the difficulty level, which sides have ground units (friendly, hostile, both, none), you can select the weather (clear, good, hazy, overcast, rain/snow) as well you may select the time of day (morning, day, evening, night). You can set whether you start on the ground and need to take off, or if you start off in the air already and what altitude that may be at. You may set the number of allied aircraft, what type of aircraft and their weapon payload. As well you may set the number of enemy aircraft, what type of aircraft and their payload for weapons. The skill level of each allied/enemy may be set and you can even set what skin you would like for them to be using from the ones you have unlocked. Of course you can also select what type of aircraft you are in as well as weapons. After making all of these selections you click apply and off you go into a mission with all of those parameters. This mode is simply fantastic and great for practicing as certain arenas you select have boat targets etc which can be tricky to get when they are moving and so are you (at least with hydra rockets).
Finally we have the Campaign mode, the bulk of the story. You may play this mode in either single-player or local co-op where the second player acts as the gunner. While I had read many reviews that this was not very fun, my friend and I love it. The pilot has to line up targets, the gunner has to paint them, the pilot has to fire the rockets. The gunner has full control over the gun turret. Its quite engaging and fun for both parties. You may also do the Squad Operations mode local co-op as aforementioned. Counting the Tutorial mission there are 17 missions all together which can be set on either of three difficulty levels however you only unlock Veteran after beating the Campaign the first time. Each mission is quite long, almost as long as you want them to be. They consist of many targets, and most of the time you have an AI controlled wingman piloting an Apache next to you. The missions on Realistic can be quite engaging, and sometimes difficult to the point of restarts. One such mission took me 2-3 days to complete but it never made me want to stop playing, in fact I was elated to keep on over and over with that mission trying different helicopter tactics to see what would finally crack the code. I have heard that even on training difficulty this particular mission can be quite tough though I did not try it. There story is separated into three different campaigns however you would not realize it as you keep switching from location to location/campaign setting to campaign setting on each mission, after realizing this at the very last three missions and replaying the game through, the story unfolds quite well and the missions themselves fall nothing short of epic and a blast to play.
So now you know what the game looks like and how it is represented, but what does the game feel like? Let me start by touching on the difficulty differences. Training is a completely different set of controls from Realistic/Veteran. It is much easier to control your helicopter's stability/strafing with the Training control method, I also found this to be the more comfortable control method when using the controller and not the joystick, however that is not to say you would not enjoy realistic with the controller, it just takes some getting used to especially if you've played many airplane games with the controller. The AI difficulty notches up with each difficulty level as can be expected, the simulation/controls is the same on Realistic/Veteran except that you MUST land at an LZ (landing zone) to replenish fuel/ammunition on Veteran mode.
The damage modeling in the game is simply fantastic and really immerses you in the gameplay. Different parts can get damaged like the gear, or rotor, left engine, right engine, pulley system, radar, tail rotor etc. When these get damaged the helicopter will react differently dependant on the amount of damage to the part and the part that is damaged. You could still be able to fly, even land and get repaired depending on the situation. I even managed to land my helicopter once when the tail rotor was damaged and I was in a flat spin, however because I was not at an LZ (Landing Zone), I did not get repairs, but at least I felt like I saved the life of myself and my gunner.
All of the dials/meters/HUD works inside the helicopter cockpits, they are all different and representative of their real-life counterparts. The attention to detail on the helicopter models themselves is nothing short of amazing, for a console game. The same is to be said about the simulation/flight representation as well. For a console, nothing short of amazing and much of what to be expected from the same people who made IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, however if you try and compare them to a simulation on the PC, it falls well short, so let me make a recommendation, don't try and make that comparison.
The sound within the game is very well done and leaves little to be desired, I've heard reports of the sound of the rotors not working from within the cockpit but I have experienced nothing like this. The radio chatter can keep you very engaged with what is going on around you while playing the game.
The game works extremely well with a joystick and I cannot recommend it more, however I know from experience before I got my joystick (I purchased the AV8-R after Apache) and from the people I play with, that the experience on the gamepad doesn't fall flat either.
The graphics during gameplay are incredible, the only graphical problems I found were actually during some of the cinematics, in particular on mission two, it appears as though it is on the PS1. As you progress toward the later stages of the game the cinematics get much improved but nothing to the likes of Metal Gear or something. The development team clearly chose to focus on gameplay elements/attention to detail over HD cinematics.
Pros: Due to lack of HD cinematics, only 1.3 GB install. Sound. Attention to detail on helicopters. Local co-op in Campaign and Squad Operations modes. Simulation physics/landing/mission design.
Cons: No adversarial mode, no Free Flight mode online or in local co-op.
8.5/10
For those that do not know me and those that even do, I have no real-life flight experience of any kind, my feelings of simulation are gathered from whether I feel like I could be doing this exact thing in reality as we are today, or in the near future, or the past. That should be the definition of simulation to the person who has little real-life experience on a certain topic they are trying to simulate. I do however, own every flight game for the Xbox 360 and the vast majority of them for the Xbox. I do not trade these games in, you could even find a few of them, even though not recent games, in my recent playlist because I enjoy flying. I enjoy simulation, I also enjoy arcade flight games. On my console I use gamepads as well I have a Saitek AV8-R joystick for the 360 that i use, I will touch on both for this particular review. On my PC I have a full yoke/throttle/pedal setup, as for games Flight Simulator, IL-2 of various titles and a few others. I do not play my PC that much at all anymore however, too much to keep updated.
I will not compare the title to other games, I tell you what I see, and what I feel, the menus/options and sometimes a play-by-play basis of me playing the game. That is how I review titles, enjoy.
Apache Air Assault is a game that came out in mid-November for the PC, PS3, and Xbox360. It is published by Activision, and developed by Gaijin Entertainment, who are the same people who brought us the prop-plane WWII simulation, IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey. There was little advertisement so you may not even know of its existance and with that I bring to you my point of view on the game to perhaps help in your decision to make a purchase.
The game does not begin with any type of cinematic to start with, it loads up, and comes to a title screen with a rather nice looking rotating Apache AH-64 sitting on a white/blue background telling you to push the start button. Doing so will give you the usual select a storage space and autosave warning, a short loading screen and you have the main menu of the game. The menu here gives the following options, Campaign, Free Flight, Squad Operations, Options and Extra. The screen itself has the main title, the menu, and there is another rotating helicopter as a background, however you can change this one by choosing the Extra option and going to Hangar. The helicopter you exit the Hangar viewing will be the one displayed on the main menu.
While I'm in the Extra menu let's touch on it for a moment.
- First you have the Hangar, where after unlocking each helicopter (AH-64D Longbow, AH-64X, AH-1, MQ-8B Fire Scout, and Mi-35 Hind), you may then select each, change the skin of each from the skins that you have unlocked, as well as apply up to 4 decals to the helicopter. You may rotate, resize, flip, mirror, move to anywhere, and even wrap the helicopter with each decal. There are many decals/skins to unlock from within the game to customize your helicopters.
- The second option is Statistics, which will show you number of missions completed, total time played, air targets destroyed and ground targets destroyed. The game does not keep track of individual stats for each helicopter.
- The third option is Leaderboards, which include Total Time Played, Targets Destroyed, Missions Completed, Kill Ratio, and Flawless Missions. These are online leaderboards.
- Option four is Replays, the game allows you to save ANY replay, online or offline, any game mode. You can then come to this section and review or delete any of those replays you have saved. Each replay is timestamped with date/time/level/time of day/weather/dificulty so they are easier to find, you cannot name the replays yourself.
- Next you have Encylopedia, from here you can retrieve detailed information on each Game Mode (Campaign, Squad Operations, Free Flight, Replay and Hangar), retrieve detailed information on each difficulty level and their differences which I will also touch on shortly. Information on the Controls is available, this is very detailed in explaining how to yaw and what yaw is how to pitch how to roll what they are etc etc. Includes information on Weapons/AI Gunner/Manual Gun Views/Views/Satellite View and how to use them with your controls. Finally it also gives you detailed information on all of the HUD and what each display tells you/means to you as you pilot your helicopter.
- Finally you have the Credits and an option to go back to the main menu.
Next up on the main menu you have the Options menu selection.
- First you have Game Options where you can set your default view between third-person, cockpit, cockpit(gunner), and virtual cockpit. You may also turn subtitles off or on, change the HUD color between several shades of green, orange, red, yellow, blue, white. You may turn vibration on or off and change the brightness of the screen. Also there is an option fro Gunner Time which allows you to set how many seconds the AI gunner will wait before taking over the guns after you've used them, you can turn this off or have it be 4/8 seconds.
- The second option is Sound Options, here you can set the music volume, music volume while in the menu, sfx volume, radio chatter volume, and speech and FMV volume.
- Third up you can Re-select your Storage Device.
- Finally you have the Controls options. From here you can select your control layout, the options are Default (gamepad), Cyborg FLY9, Saitek AV8-R, and Ace-Edge. Those last three are joysticks in case you were not aware. You cannot map the gamepad controls. However you do still have more options, you can Invert Y-Axis, Invert Camera Y-Axis, Invert Throttle Axis, Invert Y-Axis (Gunner), Swap the sticks (I recommend this if using a gamepad, for me it helped), turn off or on whether to control the gun turret when in zoom (I recommend yes, helps a lot after you get good at it). You can also set the roll, pitch, yaw, and zoom sensitivity sliders. Even though I could not map my gamepad, I did not find it too terribly difficult find something that I was comfortable with. That being said I much prefer and highly recommend using a joystick for this particular flight game, helicopters are.... to say the least... "different" monsters to tackle in the air.
Up from here are the 3 main modes of gameplay. Squad Operations, Free Flight, and Campaign of which I will talk about each separately but in that order.
The Squad Operations mode is your online gameplay. Don't let the title confuse you this is it. There are no adversarial mode types to tackle at all. Squad Operations are sorties (missions) designed for 2-4 players however you do have the option to do them solo or even locally with a co-op gunner. (I will touch more on the local-play when explaining Campaign). You may also set a lobby you create to private or public however you cannot designate specific number of slots as friends only. Of course you can always Quick Match or join someone elses game they have created. You may only join a lobby, not a game/mission already started. Other options for room setup include the mission you would like to do, and its difficulty level (Training, Realistic, Veteran - only unlocks after beating the Campaign). After you've created a room your options then consist of just changing the mission. Difficulty level changes require you to recreate the room.
All of the missions in Squad Operations mode are more basic than campaign however still quite involved/long and very much enjoyable. As well they can be quite difficult especially if you do not have 2, 3 or even 4 players. One of the missions is a race where you can shoot each other down, you also have missions where you take out a bunch of ground targets, escort a ship or transport, dog fight with other helicopters, etc., pretty much everything you get in the Campaign just a more distinct objective with generally harder difficulty due to you having 2-4 real players. There is even a mission where one-two players are drone helo's that paint targets in an area where the Apache would get shot down while the other players piloting the Apache's air strike the painted targets from far away with hellfire missiles. What difficulty levels you have beaten each mission on as well as your Player Score for each mission is kept track of and shown in the mission select screen. There are 13 Squad Operations all together.
Next we will touch on the Free Flight mode. This is a single-player only game mode, which is a real bummer because it would have been fantastic online. You may select from 10 different arenas which are taken from places within the Campaign. You can select the difficulty level, which sides have ground units (friendly, hostile, both, none), you can select the weather (clear, good, hazy, overcast, rain/snow) as well you may select the time of day (morning, day, evening, night). You can set whether you start on the ground and need to take off, or if you start off in the air already and what altitude that may be at. You may set the number of allied aircraft, what type of aircraft and their weapon payload. As well you may set the number of enemy aircraft, what type of aircraft and their payload for weapons. The skill level of each allied/enemy may be set and you can even set what skin you would like for them to be using from the ones you have unlocked. Of course you can also select what type of aircraft you are in as well as weapons. After making all of these selections you click apply and off you go into a mission with all of those parameters. This mode is simply fantastic and great for practicing as certain arenas you select have boat targets etc which can be tricky to get when they are moving and so are you (at least with hydra rockets).
Finally we have the Campaign mode, the bulk of the story. You may play this mode in either single-player or local co-op where the second player acts as the gunner. While I had read many reviews that this was not very fun, my friend and I love it. The pilot has to line up targets, the gunner has to paint them, the pilot has to fire the rockets. The gunner has full control over the gun turret. Its quite engaging and fun for both parties. You may also do the Squad Operations mode local co-op as aforementioned. Counting the Tutorial mission there are 17 missions all together which can be set on either of three difficulty levels however you only unlock Veteran after beating the Campaign the first time. Each mission is quite long, almost as long as you want them to be. They consist of many targets, and most of the time you have an AI controlled wingman piloting an Apache next to you. The missions on Realistic can be quite engaging, and sometimes difficult to the point of restarts. One such mission took me 2-3 days to complete but it never made me want to stop playing, in fact I was elated to keep on over and over with that mission trying different helicopter tactics to see what would finally crack the code. I have heard that even on training difficulty this particular mission can be quite tough though I did not try it. There story is separated into three different campaigns however you would not realize it as you keep switching from location to location/campaign setting to campaign setting on each mission, after realizing this at the very last three missions and replaying the game through, the story unfolds quite well and the missions themselves fall nothing short of epic and a blast to play.
So now you know what the game looks like and how it is represented, but what does the game feel like? Let me start by touching on the difficulty differences. Training is a completely different set of controls from Realistic/Veteran. It is much easier to control your helicopter's stability/strafing with the Training control method, I also found this to be the more comfortable control method when using the controller and not the joystick, however that is not to say you would not enjoy realistic with the controller, it just takes some getting used to especially if you've played many airplane games with the controller. The AI difficulty notches up with each difficulty level as can be expected, the simulation/controls is the same on Realistic/Veteran except that you MUST land at an LZ (landing zone) to replenish fuel/ammunition on Veteran mode.
The damage modeling in the game is simply fantastic and really immerses you in the gameplay. Different parts can get damaged like the gear, or rotor, left engine, right engine, pulley system, radar, tail rotor etc. When these get damaged the helicopter will react differently dependant on the amount of damage to the part and the part that is damaged. You could still be able to fly, even land and get repaired depending on the situation. I even managed to land my helicopter once when the tail rotor was damaged and I was in a flat spin, however because I was not at an LZ (Landing Zone), I did not get repairs, but at least I felt like I saved the life of myself and my gunner.
All of the dials/meters/HUD works inside the helicopter cockpits, they are all different and representative of their real-life counterparts. The attention to detail on the helicopter models themselves is nothing short of amazing, for a console game. The same is to be said about the simulation/flight representation as well. For a console, nothing short of amazing and much of what to be expected from the same people who made IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, however if you try and compare them to a simulation on the PC, it falls well short, so let me make a recommendation, don't try and make that comparison.
The sound within the game is very well done and leaves little to be desired, I've heard reports of the sound of the rotors not working from within the cockpit but I have experienced nothing like this. The radio chatter can keep you very engaged with what is going on around you while playing the game.
The game works extremely well with a joystick and I cannot recommend it more, however I know from experience before I got my joystick (I purchased the AV8-R after Apache) and from the people I play with, that the experience on the gamepad doesn't fall flat either.
The graphics during gameplay are incredible, the only graphical problems I found were actually during some of the cinematics, in particular on mission two, it appears as though it is on the PS1. As you progress toward the later stages of the game the cinematics get much improved but nothing to the likes of Metal Gear or something. The development team clearly chose to focus on gameplay elements/attention to detail over HD cinematics.
Pros: Due to lack of HD cinematics, only 1.3 GB install. Sound. Attention to detail on helicopters. Local co-op in Campaign and Squad Operations modes. Simulation physics/landing/mission design.
Cons: No adversarial mode, no Free Flight mode online or in local co-op.
8.5/10
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Review: Apache Air Assaulton Jan 11 2011 06:39 PM
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