REAL GAMES - AIR CAVALRY

What is it with these weird aerial shooter games?  Why do they have to stray from the classic vertical or horizontal shooters?  Meh.

Air Cavalry is an interesting take on the aerial shooter genre.  This one introduces the first person perspective from the cockpit of a helicopter.  It works a lot better than you might imagine, but it still has a ton of problems.  Once again, I don't understand why military based games like this and Air Strike Patrol can not just stick with the vertical shooter format.  I suppose these games are going for a sense of realism, but I'm playing a video game.  I'm playing to have fun, not to deal with shitty controls that are supposed to be more realistic.  It's Super Nintendo for fucks sake, how real can it get?

Some things shouldn't be realistic.

When we start the game, we are given different war-time scenarios that we can play out.  You are then given vague mission objectives and shown a completely worthless map of the area.  I can sum up every mission objective in this game.  Blow shit up, don't die.

The controls are bad.  You have buttons for switching weapons, firing weapons, stopping, moving back and forward, up and down, speed, altitude...etc.  Then you also have to move with the D-pad.  They could have simplified a lot of this, but then it wouldn't be as realistic.  After beating this game, I feel like a certified helicopter pilot.

Some of you may remember a joke I made about using the Flight of the Valkyries in a aerial shooter.  Sadly, this game proves me wrong.  It does NOT guarantee success.  So other than destroying one of the most motivating battle songs ever, this game doesn't have much to offer.  Horrible static filled sound effects and "MAYDAY" over and over.

While searching for "mayday", I found a j-pop band by that name, a boy band called mayday parade, and some sort of underground rave society that had a pretty cool logo.  What I didn't find, however, was any pictures of "Mayday" Parker.  Google has no love for Spider-Girl.

 It's not easy to judge this game for its graphics.  A lot of it looks decent, but the actual in game graphics range from squiggly lines to blurry dots.  The closer you get, the more detailed they become, but you'll also die for getting so close.  The goal is to blow these things up BEFORE you can see them.  This also plays a huge part in the....

Gameplay.  The whole problem with this game revolves around the range.  You can only shoot a certain range, and everything else in this game can shoot further.  You are guaranteed to be hit at least once before you can hit them, but in most cases, your helicopter will be shot down before you can even see what is shooting you.

Air Cavalry is not really that bad of a game, especially when compared to shit like Air Strike Patrol.  The game could have been executed a lot better, especially with the controls, but I feel that it deserves 2 squiggly line trees out of 5. 

You win.  Have a picture of some helicopters.