POSTED 14/3/11


APACHE AIR ASSAULT

Activision
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC)

Yeehaw! Harking back to the days of the take-home flight simulator that were totally owned by Microprose, all AAA needs is ‘Wild Bill’ Stealey’s mug in the ads and to be renamed Gunship Somethingorother to be the complete chopper enchilada.

Yes, it’s a simulator. If you’re looking for a spot of 3Dimanated Tiger Heli then you wouldn’t be more off the mark if you were in Hawaii and your target in any country suffixed ‘stan’.

What’s included is an officially-licensed fleet of Boeing’s other finest, their Apache military helicopter range. They're laden with numerous missiles, guns and other means of messy destruction, plus a selection of views ranging from behind the chopper, in the chopper, infrared and more. A whole bunch of missions await (16 levels of multiple stages to be more precise), all of which serve well to have you punching the air and hollerin’ “America, fuck yeah!” Erm, should you actually manage to master handling the thing.

At the risking of repeating ourselves, yes, it’s a simulator. ‘Training’ mode’s OK for taking your bird out for a spin, but even that takes skill in order to avoid the ground-biting and the exploding and the bent blades and the na-hey. Shift this puppy into ‘realistic’ mode and you’ll likely be crashing more than a methed-up cymbal player.

Local multiplayer amounts to one person steering and the other making kaboom, whereas online’s more engaging as you join a chopper squad and annihilate fictional butt.

Whilst a softcock, dumbed-down. veggie Thunder Blade-like arcade mode that looks this purty would have been super-ace, we must again stress that this is a simulator. It isn’t easy to get to grips with, and mastering it will require mucho effort. Kinda like the real thing, meaning mission accomplished.

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