Posted on: February 28, 2012

Inquisitor54
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 1
A pretty good Apache sim
This was the first helicopter sim I ever played, and despite its age, if you take it on its own merits it's pretty good. It has, however, long since been surpassed by both versions of Janes Longbow and the community modded versions of Apache Versus Havoc and Commanche Versus Hokum. Janes Longbow 2 is still the most realistic representation of the Apache to date, and also sports an excellent dynamic campaign set on the Iranian border. It can also generally be made to run on modern systems with a glide wrapper with far better visuals. To its credit, Apache Longbow does have multiple terrain sets, but the campaigns pretty much always play out the same way. So, although the missions really do give you a sense of flying through a combat zone with friendly tanks, aircraft and other military systems, they start to become a bit stale. Combat simulations are a genre that genuinely benefit from dynamic campaigns, even if they do not extend to the complexity of Falcon 4.0. If you can accept this for what it is, or are a flight sim completionist, it's not a bad buy, especially for the price, but otherwise, you'll be wanting to track down second hand copies of the Janes Longbow series or pick up Commanche Versus Hokum from GOG and install the community mods. I hope GOG continue to add to the sim collection, as its a much neglected genre these days, and many of the old simulations still hold up remarkably well if you can get them to run on modern systems.
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