Beat on Expert difficulty. This game was immense fun, flying around in a chopper, shooting and blowing shit up. They definitely took some inspiration from the Strike series with occasional winching, various enemy types to fight in tactical combat and how almost everything could be destroyed. This game was far more action focused though with very linear levels, regenerating health and no concern for ammo or fuel. The story was mostly nonsense and it did not help that it jumped back and forth between past and present, but it was so over the top 80s action movie that it was fun. The developers definitely had fun filming the action cutscenes. It took me a few stages to fully get used to the gameplay, with the biggest obstacle being realizing that rockets and missiles were only on cooldowns and should be used liberally. There were many different helicopters each with 3 different weapons and different stats for speed, armor and cooldown. I preferred the heavier armor and avoided the wire guided missile, even though it was fun. The machine gun was best used on weak enemies, like infantry, towers and light vehicles. Dumb fire rockets were best used at close range against heavy targets or any kind of cluster. Target locking missiles were best against other choppers and for long range sniping, while the ultimate weapons had such long cooldowns that they could be only occasionally used. I enjoyed switching between the 3 weapons to keep them all charging back up, while nearly constantly firing the gun. I did a lot of circle strafing and otherwise taking advantage of my mobility to wreck enemies. There were other times when I had to use cover and pick enemies off from distance, lowering altitude and peeking around mountains or buildings. This was especially important when the enemy had homing missiles because countermeasure flares also had a cooldown and needed to be timed properly. The levels got progressively harder and I sometimes died or failed to protect allies well enough. Thankfully the game had excellent checkpoint saves. There were also plenty of different sequences that broke up the gameplay; rail shooting while the chopper flew itself, stationary shooting galleries, sniper rifle from the chopper, controlling an APC and even the AC 130 bombing. The game never let up on the action and was a blast for the entire time, though some of the late game heavy SAM enemies were a bit spongy. The bosses were challenging and the final boss was brutal; took me several attempts and it was all about hiding behind cover.

I only found 1 hidden item and it seemed like every mission had 3 hidden items to find. No idea if there was any reason to do so. This game was awesome mindness fun that is definitely worth coming back to every now and then. I would love to play through again with enemy markers turned off and see if there is a 1st person mod. Some of the music was banging too; my idea of heaven is inflicting mass carnage, death and destruction to symphonic metal chants.

8.0/10