Take on Helicopters is fairly accurate simulator for helicopters, although some aspects could use some improvement. But TOH also is a vehicle simulator. You can do dough-nuts in a Hummer if you like, or jump hills. It also models bullet trajectories pretty good. TOH is more than just a helicopter simulator. It is a gaming platform for player made missions. Single and multi-player.

Flying Helicopters in accurate flight models has a bit of a learning curve. This is what makes TOH good and bad. Good for hard-core simmers, bad for the kids that just want to shoot something. Career mode is just training to teach you to fly and get used to what the game offers. Player made missions is where the real action is. Well worth the money.

This game is far to touchy, I am a trainee and cannot complete the landing in the guide.
I would "NOT" waste my money guy, I already have wasted a few bob.

Put aside all the awful bugs, including a multi-step process that I had to go through just to get the Hind DLC, which I payed for, to work, and you have a fundamentally flawed game. That flaw? The engine.

This feels like the ARMA engine equivalent of a bad sourcemod. And it does feel like a mod. The menus are awful, the game looks awful, feels awful, and doesn't run as well as it really should.

For people who are familiar with the ARMA engine, I only leave you with one warning: this is ARMA, but with more helicopters and none of the fun of ARMA. Whether that appeals to you, is personal preference.

-First Day Reviews-

**Using Dual Joy Sticks to fly my chopper (Highly Recommended)**

Journal Entry 1

I chose to fly the smaller black scouty chopper and after getting it in the air and learning the basics on flying I took off to venture the city. I was able to enjoy relaxing music and glide around Seattle taking in the sites. Beautiful vistas and sun flares bouncing off my windows, true relaxation.

Journal Entry 2

After a slightly more aggressive song entered my headphones I decided to test the limits of my chopper and dropped it closer to street level. I tested my skills by following a black Suv at 15M off his roof for what seemed like an hour, im sure the driver will go home paranoid tonight thinking the government is after him.

Journal Entry 3

Landed inside the stadium field in the middle of the city after fighting with some very violent winds. Felt like a pro even though im sure most pilots would be able to land a jet in the space that I had just proudly conquered.

Journal Entry 4

Unfortunately when I exited my chopper to walk around the stadium I forgot to tune down the lift controls.... So upon exiting I turned around just in time to see my chopper hover onto its side make a violent grinding noise and explode in a fiery wreckage.

Journal Entry 5

Now chopper-less I decided to proceed on foot and explore. But to my loss there was no open exits in the stadium so here I sit until they host the next baseball game :(


8/10





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I played this game knowing it was going to be @#%$ and guess what, It was @#%$. I only got this as it was on sale and even at it's price then ($1.49 I think) it was a terrible waste of money. At the price it is now ($19.99) you have to be out of your mind to play it. The controls are horrible, the graphics are ok and the game play is the worst I have seen in my entire life. So if you want a @#%$ game, this is for you.

I own this game quite a while, occasionally taking free flights in Seattle and i must admit - level of detail in envelopment is far beyond for any flight simulator game even today. There is probably thousand of different models for buildings, not only for landmark, but any major building have it's own model and detailed texturing. Those also all collision enabled, meaning you can crash or land on. Even trees are crashable 3D models. You can even land and get out of your bird and start playing ARMAII in Seattle. Or in normal ARMAII maps - if you own it in Steam.

I was so looking forward to start playing single player campaign, imagining limitless country of fun with all goodness above combining with full range of civil helicopter's activities, starting with simple taxi missions and ending with sling load operation and search-and-rescue mission using FLIR (thermal vision camera).

To my very disappointment there is - as we russians say - one spoon of ♥♥♥♥ in barrel of honey. And it's flying itself. I'm not IRL pilot so i can't explain things in the right worlds, but i own (and fly almost daily) DCS UH-1 and X-Plane 10 with some payware helos, so i guess i know that is right and that is wrong. And TKOH helicopters are behaves wrong. More of that - they all share same dynamics, just with different coefficients. For example all of them have same speed. It's not like i didn't notice that playing free flights, i just thought i could deal with slow response, overreacting titling and nonexistent transition on lightest bird in campaign.

Turns out what with adding more power by coefficients thing only becomes worse, so heaviest copter not only overreacting inputs (but still slow) but tends to get lift with smallest lateral movement and suddenly drop it then you manage to get steady. Combined with oversaturated (remember - we have add power) tendency for forward movement (you need a several degrees of back pitch to hold it in place) makes most docile and presumable easy to hover craft unmanageable. So on second container in 7th mission of campaign i ragequit.

Speaking of campaign - in 7 (+2 sidemissions) missions i did, there was only two civilian missions. Three if you count whale seeing mission, but single engine helo without emergency water landing equipment not sounds like civilian job for me here. And there is more of such nonsense. Why two-engine helicopters goes down after one failed? Yeah we have two turbine for fancier look. Why we need rope insertion on flat roof in heavy wind, especially after i perfectly landed before mission marker even appears.

Concluding, i wouldn't recommend this game to any flight sim enthusiast. Despite perfect envelopment flying itself is unbearably broken and won't be fixed because of 3rd party component BI have to rely here.