Thunder Helix

A great 'Sim-lite' tribute to the first entries in the Desert Strike series and the Gunship/Gunship2000/LHX sims from the early 1990s. Thunder Helix effortlessly re-creates the feel of these early 90's games down to the mock DOS prompt startup screens and the bright chunky VGA (or EGA!) graphics. The strong 90's look also means that it will basically run on a wristwatch or anything more powerful. The central campaign gameplay loop of Thunder Helix closely follows the same model as Desert Strike - you launch from a Warship offshore in your helicopter of choice and proceed into an Area of Operations where there are several objectives that you can choose to largely tackle in any order. Fuel and Ammo pickups allow you to stay in the fight while picking up enemy troops that bail out of trucks you destroy gives you POWs to exchange for repairs back on the Ship. The flying itself is done from a first/third person sim-lite mode deeply reminiscent of the LHX and Microprose Gunship series. The flight model is perfectly controllable with a keyboard or mouse (gamepad too if you have one) but has a nice amount of interia to prevent flight feeling like an 'on rails' experience. Weapons are pretty straightforward with cannons, Guided Missiles (that loft, Hellfire style at the target) and unguided rockets that are helpfully aimed in elevation but require you to get left/right alignment correct to hit. As of the date of this review there are three helicopter types available for the single ealy access campaign: - An AH64 Apache knockoff which carries the most weapons and armour. - An RAH66 Commanche-like helo which has a fixed gun and four missiles but is more nimble than the other helos - Some sort of UH-1 Huey Gunship that can carry more troops than anyone else but has no guided missiles. Noting the game is currently in early access, the lack of campaigns and scenarios is understandable. In light of this, my only suggested improvement would be to allow the player to swap helos mid-campaign with the restriction being that if your current helo is damaged when you swap it, it comes out damaged if you switch back to it later. A great nostalgic throwback to an earlier age of fun helicopter games that will run on basically any system