Yes I know this is a long review, but it might be worth reading to get a decent idea of what it's actually like to play this game.
This game is shockingly good. Essentially, it's a minimalist combat flight simulator focused on piloting a single Cold War-era helicopter, presented in charming 90's flight sim-inspired retro visuals with a fully interactive cockpit. Best of all, it has fantastic VR support, which means you can control everything in the cockpit in an intuitive/immersive manner, just like VTOL VR. It's also fully playable on a monitor with mouse + keyboard, HOTAS, or gamepad; I briefly tried flying with my gamepad and controlling the helicopter still felt great. The controls are fairly complicated and I had to assign everything on the gamepad manually, so it will probably take some experimenting to find a setup that feels intuitive. But in VR, the default controls and settings felt great.
[h1]Is it a hardcore sim?[/h1]
Just how "hardcore" the flight simulation feels will depend on your experience with other flight sims; if you play high-level combat sims like DCS (I don't), acclimating to this game should be a breeze. If you haven't played any flight sims before, this will probably be a bit overwhelming to learn both the flight mechanics of the helicopter and how the weapons systems work. I'm not a flight sim expert by any means, but I've dabbled with Microsoft Flight Simulator and VTOL VR over the years and I've always been a bit intimidated by helicopters in flight sims. However, it only took me about 4-ish hours to really get the hang of flying in this game, and I was legitimately surprised at how confident I felt zipping between tall urban buildings at low altitudes.
[h1]Content[/h1]
This game doesn't have a campaign mode or multiplayer, and quite honestly, I think that's a good thing. There are a handful of tutorial missions, and there's the mission generator. The mission generator creates a new procedurally-generated map every time you start a new mission. It also places many, many friendly and enemy units around the map who move about and fight each other, essentially simulating a large scale battle that carries on even if you never leave the helipad. The mission generator lets you tweak an impressive number of parameters including map size, terrain and building variety, the number of total units on the map, the balance of friendly and enemy forces, and the skill level of friendly and enemy forces. Most importantly, you can choose what type of mission you want to do, or you can allow the game to give you up to three random objectives. You can also choose 'free flight' to generate a mission without any objectives so you can just fly around for fun and make up your own objectives and do whatever you want, or you can turn off AI combat and just have a relaxing flight!
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
The replayability offered by the mission generator is fantastic. I love generating missions with three random objectives. Once the map loads, you can choose your loadout depending on what the objectives are; you can choose your weapons depending on your targets, and if you need to transport troops or rescue a pilot, you'll need to sacrifice either one or both of your weapons so you have enough room for your passengers, or you can do the same thing with one of your AI wingmen and command them to transport passengers instead. You can always return to base to rearm, repair, or completely change your loadout mid-mission. There's a satisfying amount of strategy in planning how to approach your objectives. What weapons do you need? Will you need space for passengers? What order should you complete your objectives in? Should you try to complete them all in one trip, or does it make more sense to return to base and rearm? Should you engage enemy units that aren't your targets, or should you avoid them? This game is a pure combat sim sandbox, and the randomness ensures that every mission is unpredictable and dynamic. It reminds me of MechWarrior, where missions can go horribly wrong if you're not careful, and you may end up limping back to base with significant damage, a dead copilot, or less wingmen than you left with.
[h1]Is this a roguelike? Not necessarily...[/h1]
By default, you don't get to respawn or even restart a mission from the beginning if your helicopter is destroyed (although you can enable respawn in the settings). You return to the main menu and generate an entirely new mission. I don't think it makes sense to call this game a roguelike since there are no progression systems, unlocks, perks or anything like that. But the randomness of the procedural generation, the dynamic battlefield, the wide range of strategic options that are informed by your objectives, the level of difficulty, and the knowledge that you don't get a second chance all give this game the same sense of replayability that I get from roguelikes. Another thing this has in common with my favorite roguelikes is the the fact that, even though I fail most of my missions, it never feels frustrating because each failure is a learning experience to take into consideration next time. Ultimately, I think that's more compelling for this game than a bespoke campaign where the missions are the same every time.
[h1]Deceptive Complexity[/h1]
This may look like a "small" game due to the simplistic graphics and presentation, the narrow scope of features, and even the price. But don't be fooled. This game is deceptively deep precisely because of it's limited focus. It's also huge in scale—even the medium map size feels massive with objectives regularly placed over 20km away from base. The medium setting for the total number of units is a whopping 200, and I've actually been turning it down to 100 to get a more stable framerate in VR, as it seems like a high unit count may put a strain on the CPU. My first successful three-objective mission took close to an hour to complete, so missions on larger maps could presumably take much longer than that.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
I really can't praise this game enough. Helicopters in flight sims always felt a bit unapproachable before—I didn't understand the appeal. I get it now. I really love the retro-inspired visuals; the tone feels a bit un-serious and goofy even though the simulation is fairly hardcore. Hitting infantry with explosive munitions sends them flying through the air with their arms straight up—very much like when you bowl people over in Katamari Damacy. It's hilarious. If you have even a passing interest in this game, I promise it's worth trying out. Do it.
Did I mention there's a revolver on your chest? Yes, you can shoot anyone with it. Yes, you can try to shoot enemy infantry as you fly past at speed. Yes, the first thing I did was shoot my copilot.
