Price:	$19.95		Reviewed by:	Mike Featherstone
Supplied:	Astraware		Review date:	28/02/2005
Pros:	Good Action Sensible Level of Control required Excellent Graphics		Cons:	'Invisible walls' at arena edge can annoy

Introduction

I've been playing Hellfire: Apache vs Hind for a few weeks now and in the course of that time have completely forgotten that the reason I got hold of a copy in the first place was to write a review of it. Hopefully, the following will rectify the situation and provide some indication of the reasons I’ve found this game so engrossing.

The Game

The theory behind the game is simple. You are in control of a military attack helicopter operating in support of a campaign of invasion of the free world (if you're flying the Hind) or a campaign of repelling said invasion (if you choose to pilot the Apache). You and your aircraft are tasked on a number of different missions within the scope of this campaign to aid your side in their effort to win the war. You are armed with a mix of weapons that you must use to wreak mayhem and destruction on the enemy wherever you find him (or her, to be perfectly even handed about it). The missiles on both sides are very good and will kill anything with one hit, but they are better against static or slow moving ground targets that can’t get out of the way. For the rest, the rockets and guns are perfectly adequate and sometimes more accurate though a number of impacts are required to get a ‘kill’. Fortunately, the targeting of all weapon systems is automatic!

In order to complete the individual missions of the game, there are a number of set tasks to be undertaken and objectives to be met. Only on completion of all of these will you be free to progress to the next level or engagement. In reality, finding an enemy vehicle (land, sea or air) and destroying it will not fail to earn you brownie points with your commanders, points for your mission and success for your unit. (Blowing away your own side is frowned upon however, so don't get too carried away as I did in my first game).

The Implementation

Hellfire is as near to a full combat arcade style flight simulator as I have found for PalmOS and as such is ideally suited to make best use of the limited control keys available to the player. Whereas PC based combat flight simulators have grown in complexity and the number of controls has increased as the processing power of the desktop has grown, this is not readily translatable to a PDA with a set of 4 hard keys and a five-way navigator. From the beginning, therefore, Astraware have concentrated on the combat side of the game and relieved the player of a lot of the strain of actually flying the simulated aircraft. This has been done by simplifying the flight model markedly. You don't run the risk of driving into the ground, you're not going to roll over and try and fly inverted (difficult in a helicopter) and you're not going to stall and fall out of the sky. Everything other than basic steering operations have been taken care of by the simulation model, leaving you to be concerned with moving left, right, forwards or backwards and keeping an eye open for the enemy while you do so. Flight risks have not been completely eliminated, however, so you need to fly around the trees and enemy hardware rather than attempting to go through them. You can still do damage to your aircraft if you don't pay attention to where you're going (though once again things have been simplified to an arcade style 'percentage health' model rather than a system by system aircraft failure model as is used on some of the more complex desktop simulations).

If that risk wasn't enough, of course, the enemies seem to be horribly accurate when taking pot shots at you with their assorted weaponry.

Missions can take the form of destruction of ships, aircraft, tanks or air defences as well as the rescue of prisoners or the escort of a group of ships or vehicles. (Normally you get a combination of most of these). Fortunately, the assigned tasks are not order dependent allowing you to be a little more relaxed about your approach to the game than may otherwise have been the case. Task 3 can be completed before tasks one and two, for instance, if that makes life easier. In the case where you need to rescue prisoners and return them to your base, this can be a distinct advantage as by landing freed prisoners on friendly soil or deck you gain repairs to your aircraft and a re-supply of some of your weaponry. (Guns or rockets only. Sorry, no missiles!) Given the number of enemies you can face in later missions, being able to take advantage of some of these re-supply benefits early on in the mission can be of real benefit.

As this is an arcade style game, you don’t have to worry too much about being blown out of the sky as you have a small squadron of aircraft available for your personal use. The number of ‘lives’ you get varies with each mission but I’ve yet to have too much trouble completing a game within the allotted number of craft. Be warned, though, the weapon fit on your second aircraft is sometimes not as generous as it was on the first (though losing a helicopter to enemy fire can be a good way of getting hold of more missiles).

To navigate you through your allotted tasks, a huge great arrow is drawn on the ground in front of you telling you which way you need to go to find your next target. I know in describing it this way I will provoke a certain amount of negative reaction but in the game, it works and it works well. Without it, you'd spend far too much time navigating and not enough time shooting and that is not the purpose of this game at all. As a backup to the ‘arrow of God’, a full screen chart of the combat area is provided. Also, a small, localised window view onto this chart is provided within the main playing window which not only indicates your heading, but also gives you some advance warning of approaching targets, which is something that you need - particularly when dealing with ships.

The graphics are excellent. I was really surprised, as I didn't expect so much from a handheld unit but the detail is very good as is the management of the directional movement of the craft as seen from the player’s vantage point just behind it. The world is drawn on the basis of a 'fixed horizon image', albeit one with 360 degree coverage, with a scrolling landscape drawn within it. (Imagine it as playing the game inside a cylinder or dome with the image of the far horizon painted on the wall - if you've ever seen the film 'The Truman Show' then you'll know exactly what I mean). A slight disadvantage to this model is that if you fly far enough across it, you will end up hitting the invisible boundary wall and simply stop dead (or crab along it depending on your angle of flight). This isn't too bad normally, but in a couple of missions I've ended up in this situation very close to the border of an enemy compound which isn't very conducive to the task of avoiding unfriendly fire. It's a minor gripe, though, and not one I'd ever use to put anyone off playing the game.

The sound is good too with sensible representation of engine noise and weapons fire. For once, I can find no evidence of accompanying music. That earns this game many further points in its favour!

Four levels of difficulty are supported, represented by different ranks. I started playing at Sergeant and am currently working my way through as a Captain on the US side. (It may be my imagination, but I perceive the US aircraft as having a small advantage over the Soviet counterpart. Whether through a certain bias in the authorship or capabilities of the real aircraft I couldn't say! Still, this is only my perception and may simply be a reflection of my game tactics being better suited to one side than the other.)

Once a campaign has been completed, the individual missions are available to play again enabling you to duck in and out of the full game and play the bits you liked best. A Random Mission mode is also available where you can effectively roll a dice and get volunteered for a mission of your handheld's choice. Whether these are drawn from the same pool of predefined missions as the remainder of the game, I'm unclear.

Conclusions

As I’m someone who’s day job involves work in a field related very closely to helicopter aviation, I was either going to love or hate this game from the moment I first found it. Because of the graphics and the basic arcade nature of the gameplay, it won me over fairly quickly. Had it attempted the impossible of full flight simulation as well, I suspect my views would have been somewhat different.

Surprisingly for an action game it is very simple to drop and pick up at a moment's notice without getting killed instantly on resumption. This is crucial, I believe, for a handheld implementation of just about anything and I’m very pleased that it’s been implemented so well in such an unlikely candidate as this.

I still can't manage a day without a 'quick game' (usually once the children are in bed rather than at my desk at work) and I suspect that this state will continue for a few more weeks yet.