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Whirlwind Over Vietnam
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Graphics & Sound:
Being a big history buff, I was quite intrigued to test out Whirlwind Over Vietnam, a flight sim that takes you back into the hectic skies above Vietnam. You’ll have to deal with North Vietnamese regulars, as you dodge AA, small-arms and more, in order to carry out your varying missions.
Visually, the graphics are pretty dang solid, to be honest. From just looking at some of the screens you can’t really tell that much, but once it’s set into motion, you truly appreciate the time and effort it took to craft such a display. The massive jungles and hills that roll out underneath your helicopter are quite impressive and realistic to boot. Muddy rivers criss cross the numerous rice paddies, hiding deadly foes eager to down a prized Huey chopper. The vehicles themselves are also recreated with a keen eye for detail, with the numerous gauges, dials, rotors, instruments and more all faithfully recreated for the most die hard of helicopter enthusiasts. Even your 3-man crew is fully rendered - cool! Some of the weapon effects are a little underwhelming, but that is to be expected from this realism-based experience. There are also a few decent cut scenes to help synch the action together. Little touches like smoke from taking one too many shots, and swaying trees round out the highlights here. However, there were some serious pop-up issues at times, as well as some bland water textures.
On the sound front, you will notice the constant radio chatter from the commanders and pilots relaying information, but nothing inside the helicopter itself from your crew. You do have a few music pieces to choose from or you can select your own collection (“Paint it Black” or “Ride of the Valkyries” are highly recommended), but you may have to fiddle with the other audio effects to effectively hear any of it. The rotor and weapons sound a bit muffled from time to time. Perhaps they modeled your headphone noise reducers, I’m not sure. All in all, the sound doesn’t bring much to this project. |
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Gameplay:
What may come as a bit of a surprise is there is no other mode but Single Player. No way to jump right into action or create-a-mission. Nada. Zip. Zilch. And how many single player missions, you ask? A scant ten. However, each one can take a good hour to complete and are drawn directly from historical context - cool beans! For many, this time period was a true test of the new American military, having been quite a few years off since Korea, and was to test the new doctrine of helicopter troop transport/support never before seen, spearheaded by the infamous 7th Cavalry Division. As you fly about during the La-Drang Valley campaign of 1965, you will be tasked with a number of harrowing objectives such as seek and destroy, fire support, fire coordination, troop transport and more.
You can even jump around to different positions like Pilot, Gunner and Co-Pilot. Being the Gunner was always fun to break up the constant concerns of keeping your bird level and out of the trees - to just create death and destruction was glorious. Spraying away with the good ‘ol door M-60 machine gun brought back many memories of great ‘Nam movies like Platoon, We Were Soldiers, Full Metal Jacket, and Hamburger Hill, to name just a few. Often times your fellow Army and Marine forces will chip in with tanks, jeeps, planes (Skyraiders abound), or other helos (like the massive Chinook transport/utility chopper), providing much needed relief to your beleaguered comrades below. This approach to include various services really hits home with the realities of Vietnam after each mission. It’s surprisingly pretty simple to return to base and see how you did and proceed on to the next one.
Some of the armaments besides the standard M-60 door gun are the XM-21 subsystem of M134 six-barrel machine guns (aka Gatling guns), HAP M158 seven-tube rockets, both controlled by either the pilot or co-pilot respectively. You can even zoom in using a nifty targeting scope to make sure you nail those enemy huts or riverboats. This armament is a bit lacking for fans of more whiz bang fireworks, but it is faithful to the era nonetheless and provides enough firepower to get the job done. Be warned however, your venerable Huey might be big and green, but it can’t stand up indefinitely to enemy fire. Realistic physics and internal systems are all modeled here, so take a critical hit to your fuselage and you could be eating dirt (or worse, playing Russian roulette in some P.O.W. camp…). In all, aircraft weight, load out, wind direction and more all affect the flight.
Note: I’ll touch on the all important control features in the game mechanics sections, so you joystick fiends just hold your flight goggles on. |
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Difficulty:
Whirlwind Over Vietnam allows for a lot of customizability. You have easy and hard settings and playing around with these is really up to the player. If you played a lot of flight sims before, you may want to keep things as realistic as possible. However, if you are rather new to this genre, keeping things more towards arcade settings should help adjust you to the new interface. Some of these allow for 3rd person views and automate more functions, rather than jumping around to each position, although the A.I. will normally pick up the slack on the fly. Overall, there are much more difficult sim games to grasp out there and with the right tweaking, most gamers should find their comfort level in no time.
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Game Mechanics:
Ahh… the moment of truth has come. No flight sim can be reviewed without delving deep into the controls and how they resemble the real deal. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the pleasure of piloting a Huey before, but I have experienced several helicopter sims in the past, if that means anything (and no, Desert Strike doesn’t count). The various controls can be mapped accordingly and adjusted for sensitivity. The base line input seemed a little stiff at times, which may be a good thing considering how wonky flying a helicopter can be, dealing with the pitch and yaw. Even the ability to go backwards is a bit awkward compared to straight line airplane simulations.
Simply put, the controls are pretty forgiving so you can keep the chopper up unless you really yank your stick around wildly, perhaps trying to do some kind of unnecessary air-air strafage… Throw in a few key presses to turn on your major systems and fire your various weapons and the interface is a piece of cake. Lastly, the hat on the joystick allows you to peer around your cockpit and outside for that all important situation awareness, key for picking out targets and rescuing pinned soldiers.
Whirlwind Over Vietnam provides a nice glimpse into the historical progression of helicopters, at the escalation of the conflict that would scar America for years to come. How that translates into the fun factor is something you will have to decide for yourself ultimately, but with decent graphics, a true to life storyline and realistic modeling of one of the iconic vehicles of our era, this title is a smart choice for flight sim fans. Add to the fact that it sells for a mere $30, and this justifies some of its failings, such as the relative simplicity and meager scope of the title (10 missions with no other modes hurts) - that may just allow this chopper to RTB (return to base) in one piece. |
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-Tybo, GameVortex Communications AKA Tyler Whitney |
Minimum System Requirements:
Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, video card with 128 Mb RAM, (minimum Radeon 9600 or GeForce 6600), 1.6 GB install |
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Test System:
Windows XP, Intel P4 3.2 Ghz, 1GB of RAM, ATI Radeon X800 XL 256mb |
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