Air Missions: HINDS Review

PlusMana would like to thank 3Division Entertainment for the invite to review Air Missions: HINDS.

Air Missions: HINDS was developed by 3Division Entertainment as a combat simulator for the Russian Combat Helicopter HIND. My prior experience with combat simulators have led me to believe such games were overly complicated and were impossible to play without a joystick. Air Missions: HINDS proved me wrong though – the game is engaging and sets itself apart from other combat simulators with its easy control scheme, which it is not overly complicated and be piloted without a joystick.

Gameplay

The models of the helicopters are gorgeous by their own merit and the amount time spent on detail is apparent after spending some time with the game. There a total of 15 missions and they are either search and destroy, air combat, or ‘survive for certain period of time’. While missions where destroying objective are fun, it could have been much more gripping if the missions came alone with some form of storyline or plot. I guess the most accurate way to describe this would be to coin Air Missions: HINDS as a hybrid between arcade style shooters, as well as a militaristic simulator.

Air Missions: HINDS gives you four different camera angles you can choose when flying the helicopter. You have Optic, Infrared, First Person, and Third Person, each giving you a tactical advantage when needed. Optic allows you to aim more precisely at the enemies, which offers an advantage against enemy choppers who fire blindly. Infrared allows you to see further, as well as to spot enemy ground units with greater ease. Third person, shows the helicopter from afar, allowing the player to see the entire map and strategize accordingly. First Person sits the player in a detailed cockpit, which allows for more precise aiming with the machine gun.

The weapons equipped on your helicopter come with a sense of great realism. The missiles fired do suffer from drop off due to gravity, and the machine gun fire does reflect inaccuracy from the recoil that you would expect in real life.

The way Air Missions: HINDS deals with hitboxes is also unique in its own right. Whenever a missile hits an enemy, the amount of damage dealt takes into consideration where it landed. For example, if a missile hits an enemy helicopter on its tail, the enemy starts losing speed and smokes erupt from its tail. Conversely, if the missile landed on the hull of the enemy chopper, it deals significant less damage.

Air Missions: HINDS takes the pesky and often confusing controls of combat simulators and streamlines it remarkably. The controls was easy enough to pick up after some experimenting. However, the noticeable lag from movement translation is probably a flaw amongst its many good aforementioned qualities (the response time can be a good five seconds after holding the key). As the game is played mostly close to the ground, or close to the enemy, the input lag can cause moments where you are crash into an enemy or terrain due to inability to react in time.

Gorgeous Sound

The music and overall sound of Air Missions: HINDS are really pleasant to hear.  As the game progresses, you will generally hear at different points a soothing background music, a rock track, or a more intense rock track whilst you are engaged in combat.  The sound effects are well done and not needlessly loud. The enemies have different sounds cues for the weapons that are deploying and what type of helicopters they are flying. The helicopter’s noises are replicated with great depth – from the chopping of the air to the landing gears.

The only minor fault I can find with the sound, was the abrupt lagging of sound cues at certain moments, when facing multiple enemies on the screen. This can lead to some confusion in trying to locate enemies in the heat of battle, though the issue was not severe enough to be deemed as game-breaking. This is probably something that can be fixed with a later patch.

Conclusion

Air Missions: HINDS proved to be a fantastic game with minor faults (reflective of its 9/10 score on the Steam store). 3Division created a great game with a lot of potential. The Combat is really fun and engaging, sound direction was crisply executed and I experienced no technical issues in running the game.

I recommend this game to anyone who loves Combat Simulators and helicopters, especially if you are new to the combat simulator genre due to manageable learning curve.