Gunship Review - By William "BBall" Ball Page 1 of 2
Were you ever one of those guys that just didn't seem to fit in? For instance, all your buddies would meet in the field for a game of football, and you would sit and read Shakespeare. As you became older, all the other blokes wished for the coveted wings of a combat helo pilot, and you aspired to be a CO/PILOT GUNNER? Well then buddy, we have a helo title for you! They should have named this one (Front Seat of a) Gunship!, for that seems to be where you'll be spending most of your time.
The premise is intriguing. Eastern Europe as the "red horde" comes streaming westward. You'll either be fighting in the Mi-28 Havoc for the Russians, or one of three machines for the NATO forces. They include the German UHT-2 Eurocopter Tiger, the British WAH-64D Apache, or the U.S. AH-64D (Longbow and non-Longbow versions). Sound good so far? Well, it is.
The documents come in three flavors. Your required Quick Reference Card (not bad, but not a show stopper…about a 5 on a 1-10 scale). A "Quick Start" manual, that's a 14 page little brother to the real manual. It's again, not bad….the two basic sections are: Learning to Fly (their picture of an Apache labels the Gunner in the backseat, and the Pilot in the front? Not a big deal to some, but it got my attention.), and Learning to Shoot.
The "real" manual is 86 pages of soft-bound information, but if you're new to the combat helo world, this (plus the training missions) aren't going to do much for you. It deals with the Single Missions, the Campaigns, the cockpit MFDs, the job descriptions of both cockpit seats, basic tactics, and a guide to vehicles. This is by no means a Jane's Longbow manual, for it disseminates the required information, but it left me pretty flat.
One of the big complaints with this game (I'll get into the complaints later, and notice I didn't refer to this as a "simulation"), is the fact that all mission start in the air. Some actually start at an airfield, but you still begin in a hover. With that said, in the manual section entitled "IN THE PILOT'S SEAT", they have several paragraphs on "Takeoff" and "Aggressive Takeoff". I guess they were meant for when you landed sometime during the mission, out in the boonies, to get out and take a piss. Also under the "COPILOT/GUNNER" section, under "Damage", I found this little jewel, "the only way to survive a general power failure is to successfully "auto-rotate" to a landing. (Explaining how to perform this advanced maneuver is beyond the scope of this guide. We only mentioned it so you'd know it's possible.)" Now if I was writing a manual attempting to inform someone on the intricacies of rotorcraft flight, then I should be horse-whipped if I thought a statement like this was appropriate. Maybe they were just trying to be honest.
The install and setup are very straightforward. A very nice into movie starts the experience, and the main interface resembles an MFD with five selections. They are: FLY NOW, SINGLE BATTLE, PLAY CAMPAIGN, CONFIGURATION, and TRAINING.
Of course before taking to the air, we must visit the CONFIGURATION screens to set up our world. From here you'll have two choices to make; Battle Settings and Game Settings. Without going into comprehensive detail, the options to "configure" under Battle Settings are: Flight Model, Player Weapon Effects, View Mode, Player Vulnerability, Ammunition, Enemy Skill, IHADSS and Default Settings. And after selecting Game Settings, you make adjustments under the titles Music Volume, Master Sound Volume, Sound Effects Volume 3D Object Density and Graphics Mode.
TRAINING is the next selection we'll take a look at. Hang on, don't get all sweaty in the palms, this isn't Longbow 2's training syllabus by any means. There are five missions; Basic Flight, Pilot Weapons, Missile Range, Weapon Range and Training Raid. But only the first two have voiced over instructions during the intro, and only the Pilot Weapons mission has voiced over commands you can access during the mission (although they aren't really instructional in nature….more like "proceed to waypoint 2 and destroy the armor"). So the TRAINING section is best described as pretty basic.
So now let's get to the meat of the program…the flying and fighting.
The big daddy of the missions are, of course, the PLAY CAMPAIGN section. If you've ever found yourself "hull down", sweating bullets in an M1A2 Abrams in M1 Tank Platoon 2, you'll feel right at home here. As Yogi Bera once said, "déjà vu, all over again". First you have to decide whom you want to fight for. Your choices are: the British 1st Armored Division (of the British Army of the Rhine), the German 5th Panzer Division, the American 1st Cavalry Division, the American 1st Armored Division ("Old Ironside"….one of my Dad's units), or the Russian 20th Guards Army. Once you've decided, off you go to that section of the battlefield.
All the briefings in any mission play are pretty good. You start with "Intelligence", which gives you the "big picture" concerning Nato and Russian forces, the Situation, and then info concerning your Corps Sector. From there, you can access the "Briefing" button (screen resembles a big MFD), which breaks down into "mission, operations, friendly forces, enemy forces, and weather". The other "buttons" are "Mission Planning", "Arming", and "Crew Assignment".
In "Mission Planning", you can add/delete waypoints (another big problem, that will be explained a bit more later), and massage each waypoint so as to give your wingman (or your pilot if your flying C/PG) some guidance. You can change the waypoint type, speed, flight profile, combat mode (engage, bypass, search and destroy, etc), and set the priority target. It can be as involved as you want it to be.
Under "Arming", one can change your (or your wingman's) loadout. Pretty simple, but effective. Remember in Longbow 2, how your never wasted time with the rockets, well, that doesn't always apply here. My favorite is the HOT 3 for the Tiger. Wire guided, and a hell of a lot of fun to steer toward the target (weaves just like snake, until…boom….pretty cool).
Lastly, "Crew Assignment", where you can do just that. During the campaigns, you have a limited number of crews, so you get to play "god" with who does what. It's not at the level of say, Team Alligator, where you can give them passes to the local brothel to bolster moral (good idea in my book), but you should watch their respective "skill" and "fatigue" values. You, of course, can rename any of them….and I found the pictures of (I'm guessing here) the programmers, etc in Army flight helmets pretty amusing.
Within the FLY NOW world, one is randomly thrown into a mission in which your machine and mission objectives are determined by the computer. The MFD buttons available are Briefing, Mission Planning and Arming. A good way to see all the helos randomly.
Under SINGLE BATTLE, you're presented with 16 missions (12 single player, 4 multi-player). These missions are pretty varied, and have the usual objectives; SEAD, deep strikes, etc,…but some are rather unique. In one, you must "slip behind enemy defenses to intercept an air assault moving into an advanced staging area". Plus here you are able to access the BATTLE BUILDER. It's very straightforward, easy to use, and I will admit I had some fun coming up with some missions (maybe one of the strengths of this entire title).
