My flight of four helicopters lifted off from the forward firebase almost simultaneously. Comprised of three heavily armed UH-1D Huey gunships and an OH-6A “Loach” scout, we set out across the rice paddies of a Vietnam map to rain down hatred and discontent upon our Russian equipped foes. With the signature Whup-whup-whup sound of the Huey’s rotors filling my headphones, it only lacked a bit of appropriate music to set a perfect movie scene. This is Heliborne.
At its best, Heliborne allows players to partake in whatever military rotary-winged fantasy they’ve acquired from seventy years of helicopters in military service. With fifty different models to choose from (twenty-three Soviet and twenty-seven NATO, mostly American), each with multiple weapon configuration options, the possibilities are vast. If only the game could fully deliver on these promises.
“Charlie don’t surf!”
The problems start with a progression model seemingly pulled from World of Tanks or another freemium game. Despite being a paid retail game, Heliborne locks the overwhelming majority of its content behind a tiered progression system where the only way to progress is through multiplayer games. For players just wanting to be left alone to play some campaign battles or a randomly generated solo mission, sorry, you’re out of luck! These things are available and provide a pre-defined set of helicopters to make them instantly accessible, but none of these solo missions can earn the stars needed to unlock things in the progression tree.
Fortunately, the multiplayer games themselves are a lot of fun. Players have the choice of a versus mode that pits two teams of up eight players each against each other in a race to capture and hold control points, or team up in cooperative missions where up to four players work together in a race to complete a randomly generated series of objectives. Succeed and a point is yours. Fail, and a point goes to the AI.
Before going into battle, players must assemble from their unlocked stable a group of three helicopters to use. Scouts are light and fast, and maneuver well, but are lightly armed and armored, and carry few or no troops. They can, however, spot mortar fire to destroy AA guns from out of weapon range. Gunships are well armed and armored, optimized for fast, direct fire with rockets and cannons. Transports are slow and ponderous, but carry the troops vital to capturing critical points and for deploying mortar, RPG, and anti-air missile squads. Transports usually have some light fixed machineguns, plus automated gunners with side-mounted guns.
Here’s where the fun begins
Each mission provides a Rock-Paper-Scissors balance. To secure a control point, for example, may require suppressing AA fire with mortars spotted from outside the enemy’s weapon range (a Scout’s job) destroying hostile troops and armor around the LZ (best left to a gunship), before finally landing a contingent to secure the area and prevent it following back into enemy hands (a job for a transport). Working in an efficient, minimally communicative team makes cooperative missions a joy.
Unfortunately, developer JetCat Games’ inexplicable gating choices try to suck a lot of potential fun out of these core modes. A critical problem is map selection. Helicopters are divided into four generations, and for balance purposes, only airframes of the same generation are allowed into a squad. Well and good, but then each of the maps is allocated to a single generation. Want to go Hinds versus Apaches over the Gulf of Tonkin? Tough! Want to fly a Vietnam War group over Kosovo? Nyet!
Even the training ground map, a large forested area suitable for experimenting with tactics or test flying a newly purchased whirlybird, is restricted to whatever helicopters have already been unlocked. There’s no ability to test drive an unpurchased loadout or preview a possible new helicopter before purchasing. Unless a particular loadout is in one of the prepackaged single-player missions, players are out of luck until they earn enough stars for an unlock. In a retail game where there’s no competitive advantage to be gained by allowing test flights in single-player, I expect better.
The flight model, despite the developer’s insistence that each helicopter has “seventy distinct flight parameters” swings heavily to the side of arcade flight, rather than simulation. With the simplified flight model turned on, the game is perfectly playable on an Xbox One or PS4 controller, or even with keyboard and mouse. Switch to the Advanced flight model, and the game plays much better with a proper joystick or a full HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) stick, throttle, and pedal set. It must be noted, however, that the game does not support the use of multiple controllers, which is a feature common among most modern sims. Players lacking some type of software to combine their flight-sim controllers into a single 4-axis controller are out of luck.
It’s going to take a lot of missions to get to the Tier IV stuff
The advanced flight model also still places a number of limits on helicopter performance. Pitch and roll maneuvers have hard limits, removing the ability to perform the kind of advanced loops and rolls that modern helicopters are capable of managing. There’s also a total lack of a proper cockpit view. The first-person HUD view is useful for long-range sniping, but for most combat, it’s far too limiting. Considering that survey sims from Jane’s Combat Simulations series had this feature twenty years ago, it’s a noteworthy missing element.
The end result is a fun, but flawed, multiplayer helicopter combat game that’s at its best in cooperative combat missions. The limited scripted single-player missions, with their hyper-accurate AA fire short time limits, are best viewed as tune-ups for the real action. The small but dedicated community around the game suggests that Heliborne should have some decent longevity, and JetCat Games’ continued support is a good sign for future improvements. Players willing to forgive the control issues, freemium unlock model, and lack of proper cockpit view will find an enjoyable multiplayer experience best paired with a period-appropriate music playlist. Players preferring heavier realism in their simulated helicopters may want to give this game a pass, and stick to combat helicopter offerings in the DCS family instead.
For more information on Heliborne, check out the official website. A digital copy of the game was provided for this review.
