Air Missions: HIND is an action simulator based on a popular Russian assault helicopter known as Mi-24 Hind, which is fully available at your service! You are not limited when it comes to an equipment and you are free to test many various weapons. Missiles, bombs or for example machine guns? Everything is ready!
As a pilot of Mi-24 Hind, you will experience fifteen missions based on fictional conflicts (sometimes almost too similar to the real ones) in four different locations: Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Arctic Ocean and Southeast Asia. All the missions can be played either in single-player or multiplayer (coop) with your friends, which works surprisingly well. The only problem might be hidden in the fact that there has to be a host as there are no official servers available. Besides campaign missions you can experience more fun in 2 additional modes; Deathmatch and Instant Action. Recently Steam workshop has been added as well so players can now easily create and share new missions with other members. However, at the time of reviewing, there are only 30 approved submissions, so we can only hope that the number of submissions will continue to grow.
What’s more important is the way, how you can control the helicopter. Support of HOTAS (Hands On Throttle-And-Stick) has been integrated directly into the game so hardcore flying simulator fans will have no problem to follow their standards. For casual players, there is prepared a mouse + keyboard flying model, which is satisfying and challenging enough. In case you want to make the flying even harder, you can choose the hardest flying model without many supportive features. Easier models are available as well, but they tend to be too arcadey. (still, some players might take it as a good starting point). Another thing that I noticed during playing is that hitboxes required to kill an enemy are pretty accurate. You don’t have to be a sniper to kill someone with a rocket, yet it does not feel like every shot is a guaranteed kill. Unfortunately, the camera was a little bit more troublesome, especially during parts, when I was switching between cockpit and outside-view. Occasional tearing of camera was noticeable, but it was not happening that often. Unlike the problems with the camera, I have not noticed any in-game lags even on low-budget gaming PC, so the optimization has been done with a lot of attention.
If I had to say what caught my attention, it would be most likely graphics in combination with detailed helicopter design. The environment looks very natural and graphics? Check it on the screenshot below. All the small details are incredible and add “the realistic touch”. Effects are on the same level as everything graphics-related in this game. Prepare for intense explosions, trees blowing in the wind or even dense black smoke from your own helicopter.
In the end of the review I have to admit that I was very surprised how complex game is Air Missions: HIND. It is a very decent flying simulator with tons of interesting features and definitely the best Mi-24 Hind assault helicopter simulator out there.
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