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Summary: If you're a serious chopper-sim aficionado,you gotta get Longbow
Like the Native American weapon it's named after, the AH-64D Longbow is both mobile and powerful. Jane's Combat Simulations brings this bird to life in an ambitious and realistic flight sim.
The state-of-the-art in attack helicopters, the Longbow is the successor to the AH-64A Apache, which earned its fame during the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War. From the outside, the two choppers look very similar, though the Longbow adds a distinctive radar dome on the rotors. In fact, the game lets you fly both the Longbow and the Apache, depending on the mission.
Longbow begins with an awe-inspiring computer-animated sequence showing you what this machine can do, then leads you to a highly rendered overhead view of your airfield, which acts as the menu. There's an audio tutorial designed to familiarize you with the aircraft's complex avionics and the nuances of helicopter attack tactics.
Once confident of your flying abilities, especially the "nap-of-the-earth" technique of following terrain contours at extremely low altitudes, it's time to create a pilot identity and choose a mission. You can fly historical missions set in Panama in 1989 or Iraq in 1991, or take part in a 29-mission fictional campaign in the Baltics. You can also set up a quick mission or custom-tailor a mission in desert, jungle, or forest environments.
The missions will pit you against tanks, anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), other helicopters, foot soldiers, and even enemy jets. Specific challenges include combat-air support, escort missions, and target-specific tasks. You're accompanied by a wingman on each mission, who will follow your commands to the best of his abilities and warn you about various threats.
As you lift off, you see an accurately rendered cockpit, but your field of vision extends only from shoulder to shoulder. There is no virtual cockpit showing the rest of the aircraft interior. A helmet view lets you scan to the limits of the pilot's neck, but shows only sky and ground. A number of reasonably detailed external views show the position of your aircraft and all the other objects in the battle.
On the high-res settings, Longbow's graphics are quite good--even better than those in Jane's Advanced Tactical Fighters. Since helicopters stick relatively close to the ground, terrain detail is critical, and Longbow uses two discs to hold information for the different terrains and objects used in the various missions. It helps, as the sharp terrain and detailed buildings and smoke offer useful visual cues to gauge your altitude and position when flying or hovering at low altitudes.
Unfortunately, all this eye and ear candy takes a toll on the video frame rate. If you have anything less than a 90Mh Pentium with 16MB of RAM, you'll probably need to switch to low or medium resolutions for faster performance.
Longbow has all the chops to establish itself as the No. 1 realistic helicopter sim, supplanting Interactive Magic/Digital Integration's excellent Apache (see review, Electronic Entertainment, December 1995, page 134). The game will also make you appreciate the skill and courage of the people who fly this aircraft in real-life battle situations. It ain't easy on the PC, so just imagine what it's like with real bullets whistling by your head. Old Website Recovery