Sound
In a word, good. Two words, very good. I found the sound in WOV to be one of it’s very best features. It’s atmospheric. The radio comms are well done, not over done in most cases, and they seem to be adaptive to the individual mission you’re flying. No “You’ve got a bogey on your six o’clock” every two seconds. The “wop-wop-wop” of the rotar blades is outstanding. Gun and rocket sounds are very good. Explosions nice as well. What’s missing was the “thunk” of enemy lead on your precious ride. Never heard that once, although I got shot down several times. Music is available should you decide to employ it, and it ain’t bad. Although once I turned it on, by mistake, I couldn’t turn it off.
Multiplayer
None. No LAN. No TCP/IP. Strike Three. And still counting.
Mission Builder
None. So much for replayability. You got 10 missions folks, that’s it. Strike four?
Campaign
What campaign? Not unless you count 10 individual single player missions which have no connection to each other as a “campaign”. I can’t even see that much of what I do has any effect in the grand scheme.
Gameplay
What can you say about a title that has been under development as long as this, and gets released with 10 single player missions? No training missions. No multiplayer. No campaign mode. Just 10 single player missions, which must, by the way, be played consecutively. It’s like the “unlock the next track” deal in auto racing sims. You cannot get to Mission 8, until you have completed numbers 1 through 7.
Let’s move on. Okay, you start out at your base, and you fly to the mission objective. Along the way you hear all this radio chatter. Fine. But when you get there, things dissolve rapidly. You have no control over anybody other than you. You cannot give any wingman commands. I said none. So you just fly in there and plug away. You see these puffs of smoke and figure that must be the enemy, so you fire at them, or more aptly, trees. No effect whatsoever. Maybe you prevail, the saints willing, and turn for base. But, no! The mission ends immediately upon your completion of the objective. And that’s despite many of the missions saying the the secondary objective is to return to base. Get used to disappointment in this sim, it will be your constant companion.
The flight model. Let’s talk about that. There are a whole lot of parameters you can adjust. Things like blade stall, and vortex, and air cushion, payload, wind, etc. But you know what? I don’t see much difference in any of the settings. Turn it off, turn it on, about the same. It’s not that the flight model is bad, it’s actually pretty decent. You can do pedal turns, typical helicopter maneuvers, and stupid stuff will get you killed. On balance, given what else is wrong with this simulation, the flight model is pretty good.
Flight model setup screen.
The missions? Well, I only got through 4 of them. Fire support, destroy the enemy base, destroy the enemy bridge. Then return to base. Oh, no, on second thought, we’ll just stop immediately after you complete the objective and end it all. Or you crash, one or the other. A little gem after Mission 3 — my co-pilot disappeared.Gone. Sometimes, my gunners went away too. What the heck? I thought, “Do I smell bad?” Once everyone disappeared, including me! Oh yeah, the helo kept on trucking, but there was no on board. Incredible.
“I stink…?”
Empty nest.
