LordBeer
10-09-2009, 05:30 PM
Well after eying this one for A LONG time, I finally dove in and bought it as a treat for myself.
Black Shark is a helicopter simulation that focuses on the Ka-50 'Black Shark' (NATO designation Holkum-A). A single seat attack chopper Russia came out with a few years ago. The game was made by Eagle Dynamics which is the crew that came out with Lock On: Modern Air Combat and is part of their Digital Combat Simulator series. As of now, it is the only part of the series but plans are in the works for the A-10 to join the fun. Rumors say that the AH-64 is on the way after that. We'll see.
The game is most definitely a hard core sim. An example being that if you want, you can go though the whole start up sequence before take off (Pass). I'm having enough trouble figuring out how to navigate the damn thing. You kinda have to be able to use the auto pilot in this game. It's a single seat chopper so you need all the help you can get when trying to target and fire on the enemy. It's a rather squirrelly bird. This is good for maneuvering and bad when trying to level out and target a tank that's 5k out.
If you think you're a bad ass chopper pilot in BF2. Well, this will kick you ass. Ever heard of a Vortex Ring State. It's when a chopper gets caught up in it's own downwash and drops like a rock. I've only done it a few times so far and have yet to recover from one.
The game is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Flying around cities and the countryside looks great, but flying though mountain canyons is just amazing (Story to add about that). Runs fairly well at max resolution with a 8800 GTS. It will stutter around cities from time to time and if you're in the middle of a full on battle with dozens of missiles going back and forth... My PC doesnt like it much. Probably should turn down the settings but nuts to that. One shouldnt be flying around in the middle of those battles anyway. EVERYONE will throw EVERYTHING at you if they think they can hit you. I've been blasted by the main guns on M2 Bradleys, the 50 cal on M1-A2, and had plenty of AT/TOW missiles shot at me. Good way to check out the detail of the damage model I guess.
So what was the best fuckup so far? Well other then the Vortex Ring stuff, I havent been crashing much. I did have an incident in the mountains though that was entertaining. I jumped into an escort mission. Was going to fly along with some transports and give em cover while they setup a base in the mountains. 'Ok, seems easy enough' Had fun going though the mountains and checking out the terrain then it happened. I had been warned that the chopper wouldnt fly well at high altitude and to be wary of icing conditions. Well I could see the blade deicing button but I didn't hit the engine intake de-icers. So I'm sitting there in a nice hover when all sorts of 'Uh Oh' noises start blaring and a slight decent starts to occur. I add some collective and nothing. More bad noises.. I figure that I'm going to hit the side of the mountain so I go to the external view and watch as I rather slowly hit it. The tail breaks off and at 1st I'm kinda amazed it didnt blow up. Then the slide began. My airframe had become a multi-ton and multimillion toboggan and slide down the whole mountain. It DID explode when it hit the bottom. Wish I had a video of it..
If you got some patience, I would recommend it. While it is rather tricky, the in game tutorials are rather helpful and the DCS forums are full of helpful folk. There arent a lot of Sims being released anymore so it's nice to support the few developers that bring them out.
RZjSI021j-c
Black Shark is a helicopter simulation that focuses on the Ka-50 'Black Shark' (NATO designation Holkum-A). A single seat attack chopper Russia came out with a few years ago. The game was made by Eagle Dynamics which is the crew that came out with Lock On: Modern Air Combat and is part of their Digital Combat Simulator series. As of now, it is the only part of the series but plans are in the works for the A-10 to join the fun. Rumors say that the AH-64 is on the way after that. We'll see.
The game is most definitely a hard core sim. An example being that if you want, you can go though the whole start up sequence before take off (Pass). I'm having enough trouble figuring out how to navigate the damn thing. You kinda have to be able to use the auto pilot in this game. It's a single seat chopper so you need all the help you can get when trying to target and fire on the enemy. It's a rather squirrelly bird. This is good for maneuvering and bad when trying to level out and target a tank that's 5k out.
If you think you're a bad ass chopper pilot in BF2. Well, this will kick you ass. Ever heard of a Vortex Ring State. It's when a chopper gets caught up in it's own downwash and drops like a rock. I've only done it a few times so far and have yet to recover from one.
The game is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Flying around cities and the countryside looks great, but flying though mountain canyons is just amazing (Story to add about that). Runs fairly well at max resolution with a 8800 GTS. It will stutter around cities from time to time and if you're in the middle of a full on battle with dozens of missiles going back and forth... My PC doesnt like it much. Probably should turn down the settings but nuts to that. One shouldnt be flying around in the middle of those battles anyway. EVERYONE will throw EVERYTHING at you if they think they can hit you. I've been blasted by the main guns on M2 Bradleys, the 50 cal on M1-A2, and had plenty of AT/TOW missiles shot at me. Good way to check out the detail of the damage model I guess.
So what was the best fuckup so far? Well other then the Vortex Ring stuff, I havent been crashing much. I did have an incident in the mountains though that was entertaining. I jumped into an escort mission. Was going to fly along with some transports and give em cover while they setup a base in the mountains. 'Ok, seems easy enough' Had fun going though the mountains and checking out the terrain then it happened. I had been warned that the chopper wouldnt fly well at high altitude and to be wary of icing conditions. Well I could see the blade deicing button but I didn't hit the engine intake de-icers. So I'm sitting there in a nice hover when all sorts of 'Uh Oh' noises start blaring and a slight decent starts to occur. I add some collective and nothing. More bad noises.. I figure that I'm going to hit the side of the mountain so I go to the external view and watch as I rather slowly hit it. The tail breaks off and at 1st I'm kinda amazed it didnt blow up. Then the slide began. My airframe had become a multi-ton and multimillion toboggan and slide down the whole mountain. It DID explode when it hit the bottom. Wish I had a video of it..
If you got some patience, I would recommend it. While it is rather tricky, the in game tutorials are rather helpful and the DCS forums are full of helpful folk. There arent a lot of Sims being released anymore so it's nice to support the few developers that bring them out.
RZjSI021j-c