Another game with an Apache. Go figure.
Let’s reduce this game to its base elements:
1) you fly a heli-chop-ter;
2) a) you have missions to carry out, and
…b) which generally involve exploding ground targets;
3) you have three levels of air-to-ground projectiles with which to complete your task;
4) you must pick up fuel and ordnance reloads scattered about the landscape to complete your task, as you can’t carry enough of either to complete the task;
5) secondary objectives exist where you must extract little men.
Now, TO BE SURE, this is a pretty great game. I spent hours with it over the past couple of weeks. It’s very addictive.
What I want to ask is, why must we have so many war games? I mean, I know I am asking a question whose answer I already know: sales. Even if you had a visionary designer, producer, art team, and everything, a game about a mosquito blowing up DEET factories just doesn’t resonate with the blood-hungry (HA HA) gamer audience.
It bums me out, too. I want to see more games that attempt to show an alternative to the endless borderline-offensive rehash of Desert Storm and World War II and Vietnam and Soviet conflicts. It’s getting to the point where the youth are so plugged in, and so undereducated, their entire concept of 20th century war history is colored more by Call of Duty than by a compassionate history of events that takes into account the motivations of all sides.
Sure: my expectations are lofty for what amounts to a silly, fun medium. I guess, in the end, I’ll only be disappointed. But once, just once, I’d like to see a game where a desert doesn’t automatically mean “a land full of nothing but oil and enemies” and Nazis don’t come in zombie waves.
EVERY GAME... EVER 