Comanche Versus Hokum Review - By William "BBall" Ball Page 2 of 3
You've done the scandisk,
defrag, install dance; now what? Don't go looking for a cool
opening movie. I love those things (even the bad ones). I must
say that I'm a bit disappointed in Razorworks for not giving
us one, for if they did, I KNOW it would rock. Can you say Robert
Duvall in the helicopter assault scene in "Apocalypse Now"?
I'm guessing that Kevin Bezant and his gang could whip us up
to the point of giving it the old, "I love the smell of napalm
in the morning…smells like VICTORY!" speech. Oh well, I guess
one can't have everything.
What you will find is that you're at the Main Screen offering
four choices: Exit (self-explanatory), Pilots, Options and finally
Combat. Let's start with Pilots. Here you get to spawn your
alter ego "combat-helo-pilot-from-hell"…or something like that.
You can build your Pilot Roster, choose Blue or Red Force to
display the selected pilot's logs for the different machines.
Under each Force choice you get to view that pilot's Flight
Log, Medals and a cool set of numbers known as the Weapons Log.
It'll show you just how "shit h*t" your pilot is (or isn't)
with each weapon. I really like these stats, for we all know
that if you can't put steel on target you might as well be (to
quote the movie "Topgun")"hauling rubber dogshit outta Hong
Kong"…hehe.
A biggie in every flight sim is the Options screen. If variety
is the spice of life and not all of us want (or even like) the
same things, then the sim makers need to spend some "quality
time" getting this part right. I think Razorworks did a very
nice job here. The Controls options are self-explanatory, with
the possible exception of "Reverse Throttle". Some folks could
care less if you push or pull for power, but there are those
of us that do. It'll feel a bit weird at first pulling your
throttle toward you to increase the collective, but if you're
any kind of a "flight sim purist", you might want to give it
a try.
From the Sound selection, you can turn on or off: Sound Effects,
Music (it's not Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings"…but it's
still pretty cool), Speech, or Co-pilot Speech. BTW, I've heard
that if you experience slow downs, stutters, etc.; turning off
the music will speed things up…don't know if it works, but it
may be worth a try.
The Graphics area allows you to: designate the device you'll
be using, settle on a screen resolution, and tweak a ton of
stuff if your CPU or vid card are not totally up to the task.
Things like: Terrain Detail, Object Detail, Cockpit Detail,
Rain Textures (if your machine can handle it, I HIGHLY recommend
leaving this one on…very cool effects), and Cockpit Rotors.
The graphics in this sim are wonderful. I'm running it on a
PII450, 256 SDRAM, TNT2, and it looks and flies very nice (it
does slow down just a bit around a bunch of smoke, but it certainly
isn't unplayable).
When you get to the Realism decisions, it's time to come to
grips with just how hard you want to make this little endeavor.
You'll decide on things like; Co-pilot Target ID, Co-pilot ECM,
Avionics and a rather general area just called Difficulty (this
setting affects things like the enemy's response time, amount
of weapon damage (armor penetration angles….yeah, they went
this far with all this). One cool part about this is that this
"difficulty" setting only affects you and not all the other
entities in the game, and in the multiplayer world, each player
retains their own difficulty settings (the server doesn't set
a "global" setting). So the "novice" can hang with the more
experienced flyers eh? Kind of like a golf handicap system…cool.
When all is said and done, the meat of the Options settings
for this particular helo sim is in the Dynamics choices. They
read like a "who's who" of rotorcraft flying proclivities: Blade
Stall, Ground Effect, Cross Coupling (better have a set of rudder
pedals if you don't have this one in the "on" position), Wind,
Over-Torque and the "widow maker" of them all….Vortex Ring (or
as the Army aviators call it…Settling With Power). If you're
not sure of what these are, they're explained in the Ground
School section of the manual. There hasn't been a flight sim
with the PERFECT flight model yet, and there are some small
rants about this one (i.e., the speed that the RAH-66 can fly
sideways for one…picky, picky, picky), but (IMHO with no Apache,
Comanche, Havoc or Hokum flight time in my logbooks) this one
is very, very good. If you think you might be the next Sky King
of the combat-helo-sim world, I say turn all these bad boys
"on" (except Cross Coupling), set the Difficulty to Hard, and
let's see what you got. Good luck and good hunting. Like the
FM version in Apache vs. Havoc, still no auto-rotations modeled.
I would've LOVE to see this, but again we can't have everything
right?
A bit off topic, but something to mention while talking about
actually flying the sim, Razorworks did some nice tweaks on
the autopilot selections available. You can engage your typical
Hover Hold (you control height through collective inputs), or
use Stable Hover Hold (the machine holds altitude on it's own).
They also put in a little ditty called Altitude Hold (only works
with the Comanche and Hokum); it's ALMOST like a poor man's
version of a terrain following autopilot, except don't think
of it that way (does that make any sense?). You're actually
flying the helo with the cyclic, but when you engage Altitude
Hold, it now TRIES to maintain the altitude for you through
power changes (you can adjust the selected altitude up or down
through keyboard inputs). The problem here is that unless you
flying over very flat terrain, the power changing ability of
the Altitude Hold feature won't be able to keep dirt off the
nose (plus the machine can very easily over-torque the engine,
or you can over-torque it if you push forward on the cyclic
to speed up…either way, over-torque it enough and it WILL FAIL).
It's a very interesting little feature that's pretty cool to
use if you understand its limitations.
At the Combat selection, you get to decide in what environment
you would like to begin your flying career. The choices are:
Demo, Free Flight, Skirmish and Campaign. In Demo you don't
actually fly, you just sit and watch a campaign in action. I
feel like the RCA dog watching this….it's way cool. One downside
that I found for this entire simulation is that there exits
no formal "Training" section, the closest thing to that would
be Free Flight. In Free Flight, you get to practice with the
weapons and avionics, explore the terrain, learn how to handle
the different ships, etc. You can select options from this screen
like Invulnerable, Unlimited Fuel, Unlimited Weapons, Time of
Day, Weather, etc., so as not to hinder your progress by getting
shot down a zillion times. It's a "self taught" program, and
while the avionics, etc are NOT mind-boggling, some training
missions would have been very nice.
Skirmish allows you to fly in what would be better known as
"mini-campaigns". The areas of the map are smaller, and the
world around you isn't quite so intense. These are more like
what other sims call "Single Missions". The bandwidth required
is much less than the full Campaigns, so this is a great arena
for multi-player. As a side note, I've flown in both the LAN
and home dial-up multi-player environments, and I have but one
word for the entire experience: awesome. There were virtually
no problems connecting, no big lag observed, and the entire
experience was very, very good. However, for those of you that
are used to seeing labels identifying your wingman, etc, better
get that "Padlock Wingman" command down pat. No labels here.
Still, a truly wonderful experience.
Of course the "bid daddy" of any flight sim is the Campaign
flying. In this sim, you're going to forget you've ever flown
in a "dynamic" campaign before this (well maybe not, but if
you're a "dynamic campaign" aficionado, you're going to LOVE
this one). As I mentioned in my review of Apache vs. Havoc,
one must become a bit of a board-game general along with a good
helo pilot to win these things. Some are a bit harder than others,
but ALL are compelling and very much a challenge. Again, you
might want to give Flexman's Strategy Guide a look before taking
one of these on. Remember those "Campaign Objectives" I mentioned
before? Just resign yourself to the fact that these MUST be
taken care of before you can win the campaign. If you're like
me, you'll find yourself lying awake at night pondering just
how to take care of that pesky airbase, etc. Now tell me again,
why do our significant others think we're crazy? Wait, I think
I know the answer.
Once you've decided who you are, and what environment you're
going to pilot around in, it's time to get to it. Let's say
we've decided to start a campaign, now what? You simply click
on Campaign, decide which of the six (if you have Apache vs.
Havoc installed) suits your fancy and away you go. If you've
saved any campaigns, they'll also show up on this screen. Once
you decide on a time zone, you now will see a cool little spinning
3D picture of the RAH-66 or the Ka-52 to prompt you to decide
which gunship to fly. You'll only see the Comanche or the Hokum,
but again if you have A vs. H installed, you'll be able to fly
the Apache and the Havoc too.
Here we find ourselves at the "big Kahoona" of all screens…the
Campaign and Mission Planning Screen. It's a mouthful, and for
good reason; EVERYTHING gets done from here. It looks a bit
"busy" at first glance, but it's really not bad after you get
the hang of how it all comes together. From this screen you'll
choose a ton of things: your mission and gunship (or you can
let "Autoselect" do it for you), read briefings (and de-briefings
at mission completion), decide on your and your wingmen's armaments
through the Payload selection, check your "Sit Rep", adjust
SOME options (ATC sounds, etc…talking post patch here), chat
when in multi-player, edit waypoints, and very importantly…it's
here where you view the MAP. The meat and potatoes of the entire
screen is the Map, for it has the ability to give you a view
of damn near ANYTHING in theatre, and you'll find yourself accessing
it frequently even after the mission starts. It would take forever
to talk about all the things this page can do for you, just
spend some time with it and you'll find it's not only NOT daunting,
but very well done.
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