Air Missions: HIND

You get to fly around raining death on the mujahadeen while bankrupting the soviet union... whats not to like XD

This is a mixed arcade/simulation game that works very much on the flying feeling and experience.
It is one of the few flight sims, if not the only one, that wants to recreate the graphical and emotional feeling of flying a war helicopter.
Grass that tremble pushed by the rotor wind, realistic mountains (the game make a large use of the DX11 tessellation feature), Realistic cities, realistic water and pyrotechnic explosions, plenty of clouds, water shock waves when a missile hit the sea, much of beautiful trees and forests, snow and night modes, are the distinctive traits of this game.
For many aspects it is too arcade (no damage model, only health bars), but it "feels" much more immersive than other (old) heli sims like Apache/Havoc or Comanche/Hokum.
Despite the arcade nature, that anyway means fun, the flight model is substantially correct, altough not including effects or features like autorotation or gyroscopic effects (being absent the damage model, the tail rotor will not ever be destroyed, so you never will have to fight against rotor gyro effects physics, and so it is impossible to know if the physics engine support these features), but here too the feeling of piloting a real, heavy war heli is present, and in a massive mode: the inertia is damn good modeled, the helis feels really, really heavy.
For the Deluxe Edition, I really cannot say to have noticed more than slight differences between various helicopters flight characteristics (Mi-24, Mi-8, Mi-28, Ka-50), and this is bad, altough graphically they are superbly realized. Sure the mass of the giant Mi-8 is well perceived, though.
Finally, the flight controls are the same for all helicopters, meaning that there are no interactive instrument panels; this is the biggest unrealistic thing of the game, and is a pity, since the helicopter interiors are graphically excellent.
As for the weapons, there are plenty of them, and they will be gradually unlocked progressing in the main 18 missions campaign. Here we have a better situation: graphically very well modeled and textured, they are also very different in both graphical and damage effects. Wonderful the ability for all the helis to switch to gun control mode, that allows manual gun orientation and targeting while in flight, hovering mode, side gun turret modes, and the support for pilot guided missiles (like AT2-Swatter ones).
The only real problem of an otherwise successful project, is the presence of a single, 18 mission campaign plus 15 single missions. Fortunately there are actually an editor and moreover something like 50 or more mission on Steam Workshop that partially saves this aspect of the game, partially because being realized by hobbyist enthusiast users means that often they are too difficult or having other playability problems. I hope very much that the developers will take into account to add some campaigns in future versions or at least in some further DLC.
Last but not least, the military units present in the game are really few: 4 or few more helis, 1 airplane, some tanks and armored vehicles, some rebel technical trucks, some soldiers, rebel troops, two ships and a submarine. Here too an extension in future versions or DLCs would be very appreciated.
Despite his defects, I liked very much this game: for the first time someone is working in the right way, the immersive one, that, for a 3D videogame, should be the number one feature, but it's not always like this, sadly. And thumbs up also for the joystick recognition and control customization: in five minutes I have configured my old joystick with 6 button, throttle, twist rudder and directional hat, without any trouble.
Finally, multiplayer: I haven't find players in online battles yet. I'll keep trying.

First off, it's an awesome game. It has a both semi-arcade and realistic game by adjusting the difficulty on how you desire.
Compared to Assault Horizon I played, this game offers realistic weapon load with a combination of "mid-air reloading" in campaign or realistic "return to base" reloading in some other game modes I haven't yet tried. It's real; you can fire rockets or missiles as many as you want or realistically glide the missiles in the air like DCS or similar without worrying to reload every shot because it's pre-fixed to fire 4 or 8 shots (with an exception of the machine gun). However, realism means discipline; every shot count.
The DLC offers 3 additional helicopters, all Russian-made, to play with. I've tried one of them and I say that, "if I pilot this baby, it's not Air Missions: HIND", but who cares, though?
Unfortunately, despite all goods, this game is a bit unstable. It sometimes crashed to desktop without any explanation why. And Mi-8 in the DLC package somehow is too slow; much more like I play Mi-24 in Assault Horizon that turning it is too difficult (but in this game, Mi-24 turns faster and no need to keep moving the mouse if you want to turn/rotate the helicopter).
There are some other reasons why I found this game interesting, and one of them is how I love the Hind helicopter from documentary videos, mods from other games which reference has been told, being a fan of Ace Combat and have tried the Assault Horizon long before this game was here, and/or have tried some older flight simulator games.
I have a good time playing it and I'll be back again to grind some more. Looking forward to see what will the developer have to do to succeed this awesome game.

MI-24 machine go BRRRRR

this game has all the makings of a excellent helicopter game. it is a awesome helicopter game but if you added a story mode of some sort and missions that had some more depth this game would be better. there isnt enough helicopter games and this game nails it, i just want more of it. more helicopters, more bigger missons, more everything you have put together here. if you wanna fly a chopper and hammer on people with rockets this is your game.

I am a flight sim junkie but I also like light on tech high on fun flight games. This is one of those good fun light sims. You can boost it to a semi respectable state of sim, but trust me this game is just for fun. With that in mind I set it up to use a HOTAS system (Stick and throttle) and after messing with bindings I found myself having a great time with this game. It is not at all overly difficult, but its not a walk in the park. There is a level of skill to be had here and it ramps it up nicely. Some missions you will need to go from stick control to mouse control (door gunner) but swapping control is just a couple mouse clicks away.
Explosions have a nice visual punch, it is always fun to unload a steady stream of missiles and watch the enemy and city crumble and explode. Some missions will test your ability to plan and execute an assault and others will make you take your time and do precise strikes. This is a game you can pick up and play for a quick fix. There are some good quick missions and a decent campaign mode and plenty of choppers to pick from if you get the deluxe version. You unlock most of the weapons half way into the campaign, that is also when things start to ramp up in difficulty. This is quite a fun game, I picked it up on the summer sale and after doing more serious flight sims I cool off with this one for some easy fun with big explosions. This game is a winner!