Be Excellent To Each Other

From the makers of the splendid (if a bit short) IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey comes this, a proper helicopter simulator on the 360 and PS3. (demo available now, ta DBSnappa for reminding me)

Flight sims haven't really had much luck on the consoles this generation. Despite being technically capable, the world has been too interested on COD and other big-name shooters to bother (see also: the demise of the space sim). In fact, the only other flight sims on 360 that I can think of are Ace Combat 6 and magnificent indie game Flight Adventure. (Tom Clancy's HAWES doesn't count)

Anyone who's played online with me knows I love helicopters. Whether appearing menacingly overhead in Crackdown 2 or swooping over the Atacama Desert in Bad Company 2, they're probably my favourite vehicles in games. My favourite implementation, however, was the not-Cobra gunship in Saint's Row 2. The designers elegantly decided that when two were playing the chopper missions, the pilot concentrated on flying while the gunner took care of targeting the cannon and missiles. This works in real life, after all.

When I first played Apache, I hated it. For one thing, the controls are absolutely terrible, and you can't change them. You can invert axes but that's it. The arcade flight model, too, was awful. You always remained at a steady altitude no matter how far forward you pitched the nose, but the game still suggested you pull up on the collective to increase your speed! Then, when I'd finished flying a gauntlet of waypoints, it recommended I pull back on the cyclic to 'brake'. BRAKE?? ANGRY PERKIES BECOMES ANGRY. Finally, I was asked to engage autohover and manually aim the chaingun to shoot some trucks and men.

This couldn't be right. Terrible controls, terrible flight model, and what amounted to a device for the designers to insert a 'stationary turret' section into levels whenever they pleased. So I finished the mission and turned over to realistic difficulty, and re-ran the training mission.

Things suddenly made sense. All the way back to base in arcade mode, I'd be swearing to myself about what great idiots the developers were not letting me, say, put the collective on the triggers and the rudder on the bumpers. The twin sticks thing seemed to unwieldy given how unmaneuverable you were. But with realistic controls on... it all made sense. The rudder and collective NEEDED to be on the right stick, because realistic controls set you free. It was like coming out of the office, tearing off your business suit and running naked through the park. Liberating, exciting, and dangerous. The Apache was now the acrobatic deathdealer it is in real life, with loops, barrel rolls and other terrifying moves now possible. Once you gained momentum you could adjust your pitch without worrying about losing speed; at altitude you could flip over while firing rockets down at a target; you could slide sideways past a group of targets while firing into them, minor control inputs ensuring your shots hit home.

Into the missions, then. The first saw me in command of Americans in not-Afghanistan defending their base from insurgents. Sweeping across their advancing forces, rockets raining down, they soon routed, and I had an exciting pursuit chasing their fleeing vehicles along a canyon road. The second saw me in command of a British Army Air Force Apache (gosh!) in not-Somalia, fighting pirates in the employ of a local warlord. Shanty towns gave way to wide savannah. The graphics are a bit gritty looking, but they fluidly, smoothly model huge, detailed landscapes which you'll be rushing over at treetop level.

It was in this second mission that I encountered my first snag. Your wingman is shot down and you need to protect them from evil pirate not-Somali-men emerging from the shacks. The FLIR mode of the gunner's seat comes into its own here, displaying a flashing beacon over the two friendlies (as seen in COD's AC-130). However, while you're searching for bad men to headshot, your helicopter is hovering dumbly, vulnerable to small arms fire. A volley of RPGs send me crashing into that tin hovel out of the UNICEF ads. While it is possible to move the helicopter around while gunning, there doesn't seem to be any indicator of where you're pointing relative to the chopper. As a result, a disorienting swing of the camera later and you have to switch back to the pilot's seat in a hurry and figure out where you've just gone. I'm concerned that there'll be too many sections that require this precise gun control (you can set how long the AI co-pilot will wait before using the gun themselves) and I think you can only have a human co-pilot in split screen mode.

Overall, though, it's good. It is definitely not for everyone, as with IL-2. The arcade controls are simplistic to the point of making the game a joke, while the realistic controls are thrilling but likely unmanageable for most gamers. If you can handle the flight model, it looks like a fun ride awaits.

Is this out now Perkies?

I'd imagine so, unless he imagined it all.

I thought maybe it was a demo. Places seem to be saying it's out on Friday.

Oh right - the demo is out now (according to Perkoise), not sure about the game.

I shall download forthwith. Be interesting to see how they've managed to implement the controls.

Oooooh, very interested. I'll be downloading the demo and depending on its awesomeitude I may be putting on the Xmas list.

One of my favourite PC games back in the day was Gunship 2000, which was a pretty decent heli-sim allowing you to fly any of a number of US helicopters. The controls implementation on "arcade" for AAA sounds pretty similar to how it was done in Gunship! i.e. avoid like the plague.

I might have to have another look at this as the controls really did my head in when I played the demo but I didn't try realistic mode as I assumed it would just be harder with those broken controls!

It's out Friday. I'm tempted to order it and NFS:HP.

Because you can't do much to the controls, all I did was invert the X axis for the collective.

NOTE: I am not a licenced pilot. I've never flown a real helicopter. But I do play a lot of simulators.

Basic flying lesson:
-cyclic (left stick), controls pitch and roll. Works most like the control stick in a fixed-wing aircraft. Push it forward to nose down, back to nose up. Side to side to move in those directions. (see below)
-collective (right stick), controls engine throttle. Basically, altitude. In real life you pull it up to increase, push it down to increase (it's positioned like the handbrake on a car). You need to invert the axis to get this on a joypad in the demo. (see below, again)
-tail rotor (right stick), controls the tail rotor. Like the rudder in a fixed-wing. Allows you to yaw left and right.

More advanced flying lesson (aka: see below):
The main rotor pulls up. If the helicopter is level, increasing the collective (main rotor speed) will just make you go up. A helicopter moves forward by tilting forward so that up is actually 'ahead', and then increasing the collective so that you maintain the same altitude while moving forward.

So, to go forward, push the cyclic forward. The nose tilts down, you move forward and you also begin going down. Pull the collective up to compensate, so the main rotor is also pulling 'up' in the direction of travel and also counteracting the loss of altitude. Confused? Just try it in the game, and it'll make sense to you there. To stop, pull the cyclic back. Remember, the main rotor will now try and pull you backwards (and up) so let go of the collective.

Even more advanced flying lesson:
To turn while stationary, use the tail rotor. Simples.
To move horizontally while stationary, move the cyclic left and right. Also simples.
To turn while moving forwards, a combination of cyclic and tail rotor are needed.

To turn while moving forwards quickly, things get more interesting. At speed, a helicopter handles rather like a fixed wing aircraft. The cycle no longer causes sideways movement, but instead causes you to bank. Thus, to turn, you do it like you would in an airplane. Bank, pull back on the cyclic to pull the nose up, and maybe give a bit of tail rotor input to help change direction. Remember to keep some sort of collective input on the go to keep you aloft.

By default, the game seems to hold the collective around 75%, which is enough to keep you airborne, sort of. This means if you do land (worth trying) you need to hold the collective off or you'll drift around on the ground and into trees. You'll notice (the game points it out) the throttle indicator as a percentage. As in a real chopper, you can 'overtorque' the main rotor for more power when you need it. However, unlike a real chopper, there doesn't seem to be any downside to doing so (IRL lights come on showing how far you overdid it, so the ground crew can shout at you while they replace everything)

General tips:
-once you're moving forwards, you don't need to keep the nose tipped a long way forwards. Momentum will carry you along quite well.
-if at any time it's all going wrong and you just can't seem to get control, try clicking the left stick for autohover.
-gentle on the controls, no sudden sharp inputs until you get used to how it'll react.
-to slow down or stop, you can either pull back on the cyclic, or change direction sharply to shed a lot of momentum.
-a bit of altitude when attacking with rockets is very wise, as you need to point your nose at the target, and this means you'll invariably go down a bit.
-fly over a target. Roll onto your side (90 degrees if brave). Pull all the way back on the cyclic, and tail rotor into the direction of the turn.

I'm downloading the demo now.

I miss being your gunner, Perkies. That was ace fun in Battlefield for the brief length of time we all played it.

Yeah, that was good! You were fucking lethal with the cannon, I was happy just to manage to land without colliding with those stupid concrete pillars.

I've just noticed you can apply decals to your chopper. Shark teeth and skulls and the usual stuff.

Well, I've given this a go. We'll see if the wife likes my bitey-skeleton cock.

Nah, anyone can point a gun and shoot. The skill is in the pilot not being shit, and being able to hold the chopper steady enough (or move in a consistent, fluid motion) for me to track and shoot the targets.

But you're right, we were fucking lethal

I wonder how many ragequits we caused.

Man, I'm going to start playing BF2 again. That game was awesome.

This is really fun, though the controls will take me a fair while to master. No crashes, but a few instances of the chopper not doing quite what I planned.

I'm particularly enjoying the bits where you hover and take out troops with your canon in IR mode, too. I can't help but compare that to CoD, but it's a lot more involved.

New maps for Bad Company soon, Mr Cwis.

As for this, ordered.

The second demo mission, I found a good way to defend the downed pilots is to shoot everyone in FLIR mode, and quickly switch to pilot mode to move slightly when you get an RPG warning. Autohover again, back into FLIR to shoot more people. The baddies with the RPGs appear on the rooftops around the big central area where the downed Apache came to rest.

Alas, a bug struck on the way back... the scripted AI Blackhawk flew straight into a hillside and got stuck. Bah.

The demo isn't co-op, is it? I need to see if Miss Malabar wants to be my gunner on this, as that'll be ace fun.

Doesn't seem to be. The only options are Campaggen, Hangar, Extras and Options.

Hellishly difficult to do both jobs at once, isn't it? I guess it's supposed to be.

Miss Malabar is interested now, and I've pre-ordered for shooty flying fun. Curse you, Perkies.

Okay, am I being dense here? I was practising with my chopper last night on realistic setting, and when using the rudder whilst in forward motion the chopper snaps back to (or near to) its original heading when you release the rudder. WTF is going on?

That's pretty much what helicopters do, they'll just weathervane when flying forwards. To fly sideways you need to keep the rudder in. That said modern attack helicopters might have some software that negates this but I've no idea.

That's about right. You can't turn using just the tail rotor if you've moving forwards at any sort of speed. You need to bank left or right too, and perhaps pull back on the cyclic a bit to pull your nose towards the direction you want to go. The faster you go, the more like a fixed-wing aircraft it becomes, and you can't turn using just the rudder on an airplane either.

(turns in a plane is bank to desired angle, pull back to pull the nose towards the new heading, use the rudder to keep your altitude steady)

I love that you've gotta really battle with th momentum of the chopper in this. No snappy movements, but you can do some awesome 180° spins whilst over enemies, firing while still travelling backwards, then flip it around and do wide , sweeping banks with your missiles blazing.

Ah, right - thanks to you and Markg - I had assumed it was something like that, but what confused me was it also happened when the choper was in the vertical (trying to do a stall turn and the nose flipped back to pointing upwards!)



Yeah, planes I know how to fly - it's helicopters have always been a bit of a closed book to me. I'm trying to get into them in RC as well, to add to the air fleet...

Hardcore, man.

Actually in a turn you generally only use rudder to keep the thing lined up with the direction it's headed. It's what the little balance instrument is partly for. You can ignore this but it's less efficient and it might make you and any passengers feel a bit ill as they'll feel like they are skidding round all the turns.

RC helicopters generally have gyros that you can either put in rate mode which is more like a full size or heading-hold which is what they are using for the crazy aerobatics. In heading-hold the tail will act just like you were expecting it to, you can point it left say return the rudder to centre and set off sideways at full speed and it'll stay pointing sideways.

I'm trying to think back to how my instructors explained it, but I do recall that if you just roll over and then pull back you won't turn as quickly or efficiently and you'll have a hard time keeping the same altitude. My turns became a lot better when I added just a teensy bit of rudder, to keep stabilized and steady.

I think this better summarizes it:

I can't for the life of me seem to complete the third mission, though I'll keep trying. Between dodging RPGs, maintaining flight (often with auto-hover, mind) and trying to gun down the million scrotes descending on the downed chopper, I'm finding it quite difficult to keep my troops alive for long enough to get them out of there.

Very much looking forward to employing Miss Malabar as a gunner so I can concentrate on flying while she angrily mows down the enemies.

Still, I'm having an immense amount of fun. I hope the full game is interesting, as the mechanics are all there to make it enjoyable for me.

Just had a go of this and really enjoyed it. Thankfully there's the option there to swap the sticks around so that the rudder is on the left. Reckon I'll wait and pick it up cheap, though.

WTB New G-Police game.

I only had the demo of that, but I spent hours upon hours having fun. Was the full game as ace?

You *can* move around in a limited capacity while in auto-hover gunner mode. Whatever stick isn't aiming the gun allows you to move around a bit.

My technique was, upon receiving the RPG warning, to hit Y to jump back to the cockpit, move in a randomly chosen direction, and then immediately auto-hover and B back into the gunner's seat to resume firing.

Note that the left trigger (gunner zoom) only zooms as hard as you're pulling the trigger. Definitely use FLIR mode or you'll never spot anyone. The RPG guys tend to appear on rooftops. Only one of the two downed pilots has to survive.



What, so pitch and YAW control on the left stick? That would break my poor brain, how are you going to bank around while maintaining enough collective to avoid crashing?

I know all of that (not to sound snotty), but just haven't got the execution down yet. I'll keep trying, but I am certainly looking forward to co-oping this.

I wonder what the multiplayer is like.

I wonder if multiplayer will let you poke your mast-mounted sight over the brow of a hill to lase targets while your buddy who is hovering a bit further back fires his Hellfires up and over the hill?

Yaw and collective pitch on the left and cyclic on the right. The only problem seems to be that it also swaps the aiming around so that in gunner mode you have to use the left stick to aim.

Yes, but you hit a proper wall on one of the levels. It had a rampaging construction bot on it, I think.

G-police was awesome, however yes, there was the rampaging construction bot mission, which was a cunt. G-Police 2 was also excellent fun, and had a difficulty curve, rather than the difficulty brick wall.

This has arrived, and it's installing worryingly quickly. <1 minute to get to 50% so far.

Co-op pew pew tonight. I will post thoughts later.

How much fucking money do you have to spend on games at the moment??

$Lots. I have a job and I'm debt-free.

Oh for fuck's sake. You have to unlock the realistic controls, but I'm not sure how. They're not available straight away, either way

Okay, crisis over. You unlock Realistic flight controls as soon as you complete the training mission on Training difficulty. A bit daft, but certainly better than having to complete the game to unlock it.

It's a real shame that the co-op mode in this is local only

Having had a brief test with two controllers, it looks like we all got out hopes up. It's exactly the same as single-player but with the flight/combat controls separated over two controllers. Player two can't control the canon independently while you fly; it's still locked onto your nose until you switch to the gunner camera, in which case player two gains full control while player one can still only nudge the chopper around to avoid missiles.

Useless.

That's baffling. Why the hell not allow another player to be a full time gunner like in Bad Company 2?

I guess they just couldn't manage to implement either online or split screen multiplyer.

I can only assume Molyneux was the lead designer. If you can't offer proper co-op, just don't bother trying.

You have to like Molyneux, what with him being British and everything.