Apache: Air Assault (Non)Review
- Posted November 18th, 2010 at 00:21 EDT by Adam Dolge
- 22 Comments
Every once in a while a game comes out with little fanfare and even less attention. For Gaijin Entertainment, the Russian developer of IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, its latest release is not getting all that much coverage, and we tried very hard to learn why.
Published by Activision, Apache Air Assault is a helicopter flight simulator that includes 16 multi-stage missions and a co-op experience that allows two to four players to join together in 13 missions. There is even local co-op that allows one player to pilot the helicopter, while the other player is the co-pilot and gunner. The graphics are fairly realistic and the few missions we played are relatively varied.
So why are we writing a non-review? Simple, after trying to play the game the past several days, we became so enraged with the controls that we simply gave up. That’s right, flame away, but we gave up. There are far too many games out this time of year for us to spend too much time reviewing a game that we strongly believe our readers will either not care about, or will find equally frustrating.
Our first hour with the game was enjoyable. There are very few helicopter sims on the market, so it was exciting to learn how to fly a copter in game. But after the first level, we discovered a trend. The controls are clunky and the helicopter is so difficult to maneuver, that the actual gameplay experience was downright awful. Furthermore, the early missions task you with shooting missiles at ground units, but they are so difficult to see and the helicopter is so terrible to operate. It was as if three screaming babies were blowing chunks while a fat clown was stroking a rubber balloon on our TV screen, making that gut-wrenching noise everyone hates. Needless to say, the game proved more of a headache than we care to endure.
Call us bad gamers, call us bad reviewers, but we give up on this game and we cannot figure out why anyone in their right mind would want to suffer through this experience. But now that we think of it, there may be some flight sim fans out there that yearn for a fresh helicopter combat game—thing is, we still can’t in our right mind recommend this. Maybe there is a PC market for this, but it plays poorly on the PS3. Sure, it’s only $49.99 USD, but there are better ways to spend that money—a visit to the dentist is probably more enjoyable.
Go play a better game.
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Comments
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honomaru
- 7:47pm EST - November 17th, 2010
- 1
Lol Loving this. I mean at the end of the day editors are only human too right? hahaha this is way out of the box though. Wouldn't make you a bad reviewer though, in a way you're still indirectly reviewing you just never gave a score. More than enough to keep me away from this though, so in that respect, I commend a job well done. LMAO this is rich!
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pizzamonkio
- 8:56pm EST - November 17th, 2010
- 5
Awesome "non-review" lol. I played the demo for this last night because it sounded like fun. I enjoyed flying the choppers in battlefield bad company but hated the controls. Well this game feels pretty much the same control wise plus it seems slower paced and boring. The enemies on the ground are really small and blend in with the crappy textures on the ground. If the enemy didn't have a red box around them they would be invisible. Once I figured out the rockets would reload instead of running out I would just unload like 20-30 of them into the red boxes turn around and repeat. What a crappy game. And $49.99?!?! This should be a $10.99-$14.99 psn game at best.
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darthrazorback
- 9:05pm EST - November 17th, 2010
- 6
The controls are actually very smooth, if you fly it like a HELICOPTER. Unfortunately, most people think helicopters fly like they do in all the cutesie games they have been flying them in and that just isn't the case. A helicopter is a difficult machine to control and you have to be smooth on the controls for the aircraft to fly smoothly. Oh and I was flying on REALISTIC, not the baby setting.
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PSUsucksATgaming
- 4:02am EST - November 18th, 2010
- 8
Wow, the (non)reviewer must really be terrible at anything that slightly resembles a flight simulator. Gave up on the game because of so-called difficult controls? You have got to be KIDDING me. I've played this on my 360 and my PS3, and after about an hour of practice I had the helicopter obeying my every command (and this was on Realistic, not the arcade-style Training mode). Seriously, get some skill before you bash a quality game like this, you pathetic noobs at PSU. These games are so rare nowadays and this one is so good that I can't even believe this garbage I'm reading. It's no wonder this is the first time I've ever even been to this website...
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Syphon_Filter |
Syphon_Filter2- 4:23am EST - November 18th, 2010
- 10
@7 I agree with you on that brother. Samething happened to me. I was very an interested in this game but after I have played the demo. I said no way because due to the hard to control. It was so hard for me to fly or get the correct target.
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PSUsucksATgaming
- 4:31am EST - November 18th, 2010
- 11
The only people who whine about the controls in this game are the ones that don't know how to play anything besides CoD or Halo.
The helicopters in this game fly like HELICOPTERS and that is intentional - they aren't supposed to have FPS controls. So stop looking for CoD where there is none.
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adamdolge
- 12:08pm EST - November 18th, 2010
- 14
I should probably recommend all those considering this game to rent it, try the demo, check it out for yourself. We sadly didn't have time to devote to really mastering the controls and trying to get over the difficult to see targets on the ground. But, please, check it out if you think it may be interesting, we just need to move on to games we feel more readers are interested in. Make sense? Also, this was intended to be a bit of a joke, something to laugh at.
Adam
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EddieDZ
- 1:34pm EST - November 18th, 2010
- 16
for some reason i didnt find the controls to be THAT AWFUL.. they could have used some more tweaking but i was able to maneuver the copter just find after afew mins, thought the graphics where good if this game would have came out 2yrs ago, i enjoyed the training mission though, i thought it was a downloadable game for $19.99 which is fine, but a full disc at $50-$60 is not worth it. only hardcore copter fans will buy it and enjoy it some what
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Centurion-Legion777
- 6:40pm EST - November 18th, 2010
- 17
it's a simulator... i would expect the controls to be REALISTIC, i dont think helicopters are flown just by pressing forward on one stick and shooting randomly, if you can't get used to controls in an hour or so, you are pretty much stupid or just not meant to fly by all means
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Free_fall
- 1:19am EST - November 19th, 2010
- 18
You are bad reviewers. If you don't have the patience to completely play a game through, how can you give an honnest opinion of it? There is a reason I come to your site to read about a game before I buy it, and it isn't so that you can tell me you didn't play it through. Now I'm left with the question
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Freefall
- 1:29am EST - November 19th, 2010
- 19
I tried to write a longer post before but it messed up,
I'm a helicopter pilot, the controls aren't in the least realistic but they are closer than many especially on a console.
I think that the reviewers and many gamers are so used to game types they have played many dozens of times in the past that when something they aren't familiar with, and as such not able to instantly master comes along, they blame the controles for being crappy. I put some time into the demo and although it was brutal at first it didn't take long for it to come around. The controles couldn't really be any better. In my opinion the only thing that would make them better would be to make them more realistic but then you people would just complain more about it being too hard.
I expect 13 year old boys to lose patience and give up on gametypes they aren't familiar with and can't be good at instantly, but any reviewer worth a damn should play a game from start to finish before he write up an opinion about the game. I mean its your job right?
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CorporateHammer
- 10:14pm EST - November 23rd, 2010
- 20
Why even bother writing anything ? I mean you can\\\'t bother learning how to play it right? Such a sad site this is and even sadder are the people who pass on trying this game based on the pure ignorance here. Such a joke.
This will permanently ban this user and delete all associated comments. This action is irreversible, are you SURE you want to do this?!
