Posted on: February 18, 2021

Nicktheblack

Games: 531 Reviews: 10

Worth a buy

This is a solid helo sim you can buy with confidence. I am a Win 10 user and game runs perfectly when installed either via GOG galaxy or common installer. Digital Integration shined in early '90s with Their Tornado simulator which was viewed as "hard core" by both players and critics. Tornado has laid a foundation for three follow up games: this one, Hind and iF-16 which is sadly not available on gog.com. None of them are difficult like Tornado and this Apache Longbow game is the easiest of them all. Difficulty wise you have only two options: You can choose realistic or simple flight model. In my opinion everybody who had at least some helo experience should choose realistic because even on realistic many forces influencing your helo are not simulated. If you want a realistic helo flying buy Hind from same company also available on gog.com. Difficulty slider (1 to 9). This affects many aspects of game not directly related to flight model. 1. The speed of enemy reaction and how much their missiles are susceptible to countermeasures. 2. The number of eliminated targets needed for "Mission accomplished". 3. How many hits your helo can take before exploding or having an engine overheat. Regardless of difficulty you chose you need to accomplish mission objectives AND to land at desired base for mission to be successful. Problems known to me: 1. Yemen campaign is almost unplayable and 8/10 single missions there because a glitch will collide you with your base LHA Tarawa from the moment you increase your throttle and kill your pilot. This means you have roughly 1/3 of intent content unplayable. 2. Few missions are ill optimized for playing on high difficulty setting (I play 8/9). Example: Fourth mission in Korean campaign might ask you to eliminate four ECM vehicles. You kill all four but game does not say "mission accomplished" because it thinks you should kill more on your difficulty level. You can exit and reload until you get playable mission.

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Posted on: February 28, 2012

tahoman

Verified owner

Games: 26 Reviews: 1

Nice Sim for its Time

Was my first pick-up when I bought my 1st "modern" PC. Chose this over a title called "Jane's Apache Longbow" and enjoyed it thoroughly, though I did pick up that "other" title later. Though the graphics are dated, I still really like flying with this and its companion sim, Hind.

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Posted on: December 27, 2018

lmll1400

Verified owner

Games: 500 Reviews: 1

Good Apache flight sim.

DI Apache Longbow got good critic scores when released, but it's overshadowed by Jane's Longbow after some months. Also its overall 3d graphic style which was mainly gouraud shading but not much texture mapping might have less attractiveness. One thing I like is liveness in the battlefields. Small scale battles happen in each mission and players can notice those heats. Each AI in there seems to have own to-do things and try to do their jobs. Some missions are possible to be completed without player's direct activity. Another nice things are a lot of polygon objects the developer elaborated, broad area for heli sim, and top speed PC wasn't demanded. The map of Korean theater in the briefing screen is well represented, rivers' shapes are done good enough, they(developer) seemed to refer to real maps (but ones in the 60s at least though). Positions of civil buildings are questionable, and there isn't wide city area near to Han river. Obviously it's the better one represented than former products and later some products. One of cons is there should have been cooler explosion effects for objects, which effects were somewhat simplicated even from views of that time. Also avionics and flying physics might have needed a little more enhancement, as Hind by the same company. All in all I think it's a quite good retro sim if players can tolerate old and barely textured graphics.

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Posted on: November 30, 2019

mrelusive603

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 14

Dated, but still fun. Use a joystick!

I was pleasantly surprised to discover DOSBox supports my USB joystick. If you don't have a joystick, you can pick up a basic Thrustmaster USB joystick for $20 on Amazon. I use a Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS One myself, but in all honesty, anything is better than flying with the arrow keys. One issue with this game is that it renders at a maximum resolution of 640x480. Sure, you can upscale it to your desktop resolution via DOSBox, but all you're doing is stretching a low-resolution image. Enemies often appear as mere pixels in the distance. Even the zoom function on the TADS doesn't help much. Another issue is the awkward view controls. Unlike other games, such as Enemy Engaged, where you can enable mouselook, in this you have to use F4 & F5 to pan left or right. You have to hold ALT and use the cyclic controls to look around in TADS and helmet view. It feels quite rigid at times and takes a bit of getting used to. Despite those technical shortcomings, I want to emphasize that it's not a bad game at all, it's just dated and surpassed by better gunship simulators; such as Jane's Longbow 2 and Enemy Engaged.

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Posted on: August 16, 2015

Verified owner

Games: 0 Reviews: 2

A good 'un

Back in DOS days I loved a good flight sim where the avionics, radar and weapon management were simulated and it was a genuine simulation. Digital Integration were masters at this and their first offering Tornado was imo simply the best flight sim at the time with a manual the thickness of a novel. The Apache with its complex avionics and targeting systems was a natural contender for them to simulate, and this sim, although not quite a deep as Tornado is a damned fine game, and theres none of this irritating "achieve this, then you can unlock this feature" console style of gameplay accompanied by some tedious story featuring a gravel voiced square jawed pilot. Its purely menu driven and no story. Buy this game.

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