''LHX Attack Chopper'' is a combat
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...
simulation game published by
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...
in 1990. Development was led by
Brent Iverson, who later designed ''
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat''. The game was released for MS-DOS and ported to the
Mega Drive/Genesis.
LHX is acronym from
Light Helicopter Experimental.
Gameplay
In addition to the
LHX prototype scout-attack helicopter, the game includes two flyable US Army helicopters the
AH-64A Apache and
UH-60 Blackhawk and (as of 1990) a prototype
MV-22 Osprey
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is an American multi-use, tiltrotor military transport aircraft, military transport and cargo aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed ...
(which can actually switch between helicopter and airplane control modes), any of which may be deployed against Soviet-made ground and air military equipment in the three war theaters of Libya, Vietnam and Germany. Allied units are also available, but they do not actively join the fight, nor do the opposing units usually fire upon allied equipment, apart from specific escort missions where a
B-2 bomber
The Northrop B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American Heavy bomber, heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth aircraft, stealth technology designed to penetrator (aircraft), penetrate dense anti-aircraft war ...
or a couple of
UH-60 helicopters tasked with
CSAR will enter into enemy air space. All missile-equipped units (both ground and air) have a limited number of shots, often matching the number of ready-to-fire missiles available in the real system. Land units do not move, but air units do.
The player can play any campaign or mission in any preferred order, facing five different complexity levels, which will improve the enemy's
situation awareness
Situational awareness or situation awareness, often abbreviated as SA is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. It is also defined as the perception of the elements in the envi ...
, time of reaction and sheer number and quality of the fielded forces. Every completed mission will not affect the other missions or the campaign as a whole, and the player can run the same mission again regardless of its previous result. At the end of every mission, the player receives a mission debriefing describing the consequences of the success or failure, and a point counter will change depending on whether the primary target is completed, whether the pilot landed at an allied airfield and not just in friendly territory, and to a smaller extent on the number of other enemy forces destroyed in the process of reaching and returning from the target area.
At the debriefing, given the mission outcome, the pilot may receive different medals or a promotion up to colonel rank. In case the player's helicopter exploded mid-air or crashed, the pilot will die, and the player career will end. If landing in enemy territory, different outcomes are available, with the pilot being captured, killed, escaped to friendly territory, or rescued by friendly forces.
Reception
A 1992 ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'' survey of wargames with modern settings gave the game two and a half stars out of five, stating that it had a "highly unrealistic flight model".
A 1994 survey gave it two stars, stating that "it enjoyed more popular success than I thought it deserved".
In 1994, ''
PC Gamer US
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
'' named ''LHX Attack Chopper'' the 29th best computer game ever. The editors wrote that "what the game lacks in graphic polish it more than makes up for with fast action".
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lhx Attack Chopper
1990 video games
Cold War video games
Combat flight simulators
DOS games
Electronic Arts games
Helicopter video games
Sega Genesis games
Video games scored by George Sanger
Video games set in Libya
Video games set in Germany
Vietnam War video games
Video games set in Vietnam
Video games set in East Germany
Video games developed in the United States
Single-player video games