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Search & Rescue: Vietnam MedEvac

by Joe "Impaler" Highman

Article Type: Review
Article Date: December 18, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Search & Rescue: Vietnam MedEvac
Category: Helicopter Rescue Simulation
Developer: Interactive Vision Games
Publisher: Global Star Software
Release Date: Released
Sys. Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here

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Beating the Air into Submission

A very good friend of mine from my youth who is now an accomplished and heralded flight instructor once berated my enthusiasm for helicopters by explaining that piloting a helicopter “isn’t flying, it’s beating the air into submission.” Of all the lessons I learned in my late-teens/early-twenties, why I carry that one with me so firmly is beyond me!

Gotta start somewhere

But I love helicopters and their distinctive sound as the rotor blades do, in fact, beat the tar out of the poor defenseless air and create lift of their own! My enthusiasm bleeds into a passion for computer-based helicopter flight simulations, of which, there is a notable and lamentable short supply. Ask a COMBATSIM.COM subscriber to name the titles of significance, and one can use one hand. Everyone remembers the classic Microprose Gunship, circa 1987. And the follow-up title from 1991, Gunship 2000 still ranks as one of the finest games I have ever played (and it’s a large reason why I’m not a doctor today! That and beer, stupid freshman year angst!) Since that time, only Jane’s Longbow and Longbow2 have proven to be genre-defining and sustaining titles.

Here at COMBATSIM.COM, we come together to discuss all things combat-related. Primarily, the focus is on the offensive, read aggressive, nature of warfare. Take one part assaulting force and one part defending force, sprinkle liberally with guns, tanks, and bombs, and mix well. Bake at high heat for several sleepless days in a row.

However, not everyone enjoys the mayhem and action that drives so many of the titles within our purview. There is a side to combat that is recently finding more of a voice in the gaming industry. That voice speaks for the too often unsung heroes of the medical and rescue personnel that brave battlefield conditions to save lives, rather than to take them.

Don't drink the water

A More Civilized Time

A similar void has existed for years in the civilian-rotary wing aviation sector. Apart from the laughable Sim-Copter title and the inclusion of the Bell 206 in Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 to present, very few titles have allowed the non-combatant rotorhead to get his fix. One company, Global Star Software, feels your pain, and offers two new titles, both born of the RenderWare graphics-rendering engine.

These titles, Vietnam MedEvac and Coastal Heroes, are the fourth installments of the venerable and accomplished Search & Rescue series. While the Coastal Heroes title is excellent as a non-militant version of the family, we at COMBATSIM.COM need a gun or two thrown into the mix. Thus, this article will focus on Vietnam MedEvac. As you can imagine, any helicopter-centered title set during the Vietnam Conflict had better well include the Huey, otherwise, it just wouldn’t fit, now would it?



Enter the Huey

Prior to the introduction of the helicopter, a wounded soldier on the battlefield had a far higher mortality rate than a soldier of the modern era can expect. Rescue efforts consisted of wheeled or tracked vehicles overland and perhaps a waiting field hospital or hospital ship off the coast. The Korean Conflict saw the first deployment of the newly adopted rotary-wing technology using under-powered small craft capable of airlifting two or three wounded men beyond the limited facilities of an aide station and get them directly to a waiting MASH unit or established hospital.

If the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, saw the birth of the helicopter as a viable tool for search and rescue (SAR) work, then Vietnam, 1954-1975 was the maturation period. The Vietnam Conflict provided the stage upon which the rules of land-based warfare forever changed, where the helicopter and its unprecedented ability to carry men and material rapidly over great distance and with little regard for natural boundaries. So, too, were the superior engines and airframes of the day put to good work to lift large numbers of wounded or dead men out of harm's way and into the waiting hands of medics, nurses, and surgeons.

While there were other helicopters in the skies over and off the coast of Vietnam, including those manufactured by the McDonnell Douglas, Hughes and Sikorsky companies, most people think of the Bell UH-1 Model 204/205/212 series rotary-wing beast when they envision the US involvement in Vietnam. Officially, it was called the Iroquois, but only the devout students of military history or aviation call it that. Universally, it is known as the “Huey”. In fact, so widely used was the moniker that when Bell modified their Model 209 airframe and developed the first AH-1 gunship helicopter, they slapped the label “Huey Cobra” on it.

The Huey is responsible for flying an estimated 110,000 US Army combat casualties to rear-area medical facilities. The platform also saw service as a transport for combat troop insertion and extraction, fire support coordination, search and rescue, airborne battlefield command and control, and in general utility and cargo duty.



Enough History Class, More Gaming!

Vietnam MedEvac offers the virtual pilot the opportunity to engage in either single mission free-flight missions or to enlist in a long-running campaign of missions. While the title “Search & Rescue: Vietnam MedEvac” would suggest that your primary function would be to provide SAR services and medevac of wounded troops. Rather, your piloting skills will be tested in all weather conditions and all times of day or night providing transport, cargo, water rescue, and inspection missions.

In free-flight mode, you may choose any mission or location and then set weather, time of day, and flight model settings. During a campaign structure, however, these details are scripted per mission or are locked down during pilot creation. Your pilot flies a chopper with US markings, however, your progress is marked, and rewarded by promotions using a notably non-US military grade structure. Your custom pilot begins his career as a young green Ensign, and with increased flight hours, you achieve the grade of Able Ensign, Sublieutenant, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, and Aircraft Commander. The manual says that you need upwards of 20 flight hours and 400 points for your first promotion, but this number is wildly exaggerated!

My pilot rap sheet

The points I mention are earned based on your in-flight performance and modified by your career modifiers. Your score is skewed by your pre-campaign decision to use easy or realistic flight mode, whether crashes are enabled, or whether your pilot can be killed as a result of a crash or combat wounds. Selecting a mortal pilot in a crash-worthy craft under realistic flight conditions will garner 100 percent of the mission points, whereas an invincible airman behind the simplified controls of an arcade like point-and-scoot control system will only earn 60 percent. Sounds like a stiff modifier? Well, it is, until you figure that each mission is only worth 100 points at a time.

Mission performance also affects your overall score. Making errors in procedure or even taking a single round of incoming fire will wildly affect your overall score. For example, of the 100 mission points possible, I lost nearly 35 points by taking one single ping of “cosmetic hull damage”. I lost nearly 50 points for flying over 140 knots. I lost all my points because in one mission I had to pick up a dying man who didn’t make it the 53-mile flight to the nearest hospital. Quickly, points become a non-issue and you will find yourself flying simply for the flight time and for the mission success or failure. This may be a bug in the pre-release version, but only time can tell.

Sometimes you just have to have fun, you know?

Behind the Stick

Novice aviators will appreciate the Easy flight model, while more seasoned flyers will feel right at home in Realistic mode. Be warned, however, that this title, while able to be flown by keystroke, will absolutely drive you insane without a good set of flight controls. I use the Logitech Wingman Rumblepad USB game controller in "Flight" mode, with one of the analog joysticks controlling the cyclic stick pitch and bank movement while the other stick controlled the collective and the rudder controls. Even with these modest means, I found the realistic flight model quite responsive and manageable.

I’d have to say that thus far, no single flight model has felt as closely tied to real-world conditions, although perhaps a tad too sensitive. While the Easy mode is nothing more than a point your nose and go endeavor, the realistic mode is challenging and requires constant attention. Fortunately for the "rescue" side of the game, Vietnam MedEvac borrows some technology from its more modern cousin in the Search & Rescue 4 family and a hover augmentation mode is included.

The weather conditions vary as widely as their real-world counterparts. In campaign mode, you have no control over when and in what conditions you fly. You may be asked to deliver troops into a forest clearing on a still, rosy dawn, or might have to rescue wounded men off a sinking ship while battling 40 knot winds and horizontal rain. Or even more challenging for the historical era, you may be asked to land on a hillside shrouded so deeply in fog that you cannot see the mountain until its right in your face. Flying in free-flight mode with the weather effects turned to just downright monstrous can be quite amusing at that!

Not Rain, nor sleet, nor snow... but this is nuts

By default, the game is played from a third-person chase camera view of the aircraft. Toggling between this view and a first-person view from the right seat is only a push of a key away, but over time, you will probably find that the chase camera view is more efficient. This is disappointing, as flying from this arcade-like perspective takes away from some of the power of the simulation engine. Unfortunately, the view is just too limited from the pilot’s seat, especially when it comes to detailed work, such as hovering in high wind while a swimmer extracts victims or while lifting a litter from the ground.

The sounds in this game can be summed up with one word… Boring! While the engines whine at start and the rotors do thump nicely, none of the other sounds have any realism or power of their own. The door-mounted M-60 machine gun sounds like a ricochet from a bad spaghetti western and other weapons sound more like a child’s party favor noisemaker than any weapon of war.

If your craft comes too close to a bystander on the ground, they make an amusing but stock high-pitched shout of alarm. And heaven forbid you should get hit by small arms fire while using the keyboard for flight controls, as there is remarkably little difference between the noise made by a 7.62mm round tearing into aircraft aluminum and the recoil of a key on all but the quietest keyboards! Sadly, about the most impressive sound effect is found while opening or closing the hoist door from the interior of the cockpit. The sound of the rotor blades changes from a muffled whump to a distinct whine as the door slides open. Too bad that this is about the best thing to be said for the sound effects, but if you can’t say anything nice, I guess.



We’ll Come in Low Out of the Rising Sun…

As you can note from the screenshots, the graphics are a mixed bag of wonderfully generated terrain and weather effects, but then a sparse collection of ground clutter to populate the landscape. I did not serve in Vietnam, nor have I visited, but the Vietnam I’ve read about is supposed to be more densely vegetated than the occasional grove of palm trees sprinkled here and there among hillsides of impassable vegetation.

Soldiers, both US and Vietcong, and civilians as well have an almost stick figure like design and their AI is annoying at best. US soldiers will occasionally sit idly by while Vietcong troops pelt the aircraft while landing at what one would assume to be a secure hospital. This is forgivable, I guess because your craft has an on-board machine gunner to protect the ship, just please overlook the fact that he will shoot friendlies just as often as enemies, and thus forfeiting all mission points.

One high point in the graphics has to be the smoke from occasional fires around the landscape. While on the surface these might look more like window-dressings, the smoke plumes move with the winds and can provide a very large wind sock to help you with setting up approaches of hovering into the wind and the like. Of course, you can get the exact same information from the weather report radio function, but there is still a lot to be said for VFR conditions.

Where there's smoke, there's friction

The RenderWare graphics engine does a capable job of rendering an interesting landscape, and zipping along a river valley at NOE altitude and high speed is exhilarating. I never experienced any lag or dropouts while playing, and to see the hillsides illuminated by a crash of lightning during the pitch of midnight certainly gets your attention.



Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It…

Vietnam MedEvac boasts over 100 missions included in the game. Each of these actually breaks down into one of a category of mission types. Regardless of the mission objective, the basic steps are always the same. Start both your engines, take off, fly to the various objective sites, perform the assigned task, check out your passenger and cargo conditions, return victims to a hospital if applicable, return to your base, land, and shutdown. Rinse and repeat 100 times. For your amusement, here is a quick description of the mission objective types.

Inspection:Fly within 0.1km of the objective area and linger for a time so your co-pilot can examine the area for reconnaissance purposes. Normally these will turn out to be routine fly-in and fly-out missions, but occasionally, you’ll have to fly into a hot area and defend your ship.

A bridge too far?

Delivery: Be it cargo or troops, fly to an objective area and either land to deploy troops or cargo, or attach cargo to your hoist rope and lower to waiting personnel on the ground. Very rarely will a cargo mission draw enemy fire, but it isn’t unheard of.

Extraction: Troops sometimes need to be pulled from the field or from some hazardous condition. Either land nearby and allow them to board or lower a medic on a sling to hoist them up. One such extraction mission asks you to rescue a cut-off squad of marines from a riverbank deep in a mountainous valley.

Medevac: Go figure that every once in a while, you might be asked to fly somewhere and help an injured person. Some victims can walk under their own power, but others will need a stretcher team to carry them to the aircraft. Your field medic can also help wounded troops. Deliver these victims rapidly to waiting medical personnel at the hospital ship.

Water Rescue: One of the more difficult missions, as your rotor downwash can actually damage the struggling victims in the water. All water rescue missions will require the deployment of a rescue swimmer, either by lowering via a sling or by lowering the entire bird below 15 feet above the water so the diver can, well, dive! The swimmer will then report on victim conditions and, with the help of a sling, allow you to pluck them from the water one by one. Again, finish the mission by delivering the unfortunate people to a hospital.

Hoisting a rescue swimmer from the water

Back to the World

All in all, this title could be worse. If you’re looking for a significant flight simulation, this title isn’t all that bad, and when you compare it against some more popular flight simulator programs out there, the price can’t be beat! The civilian variant, Coastal Heroes, might be more up your alley, especially since that title will allow you to fly three different craft instead of the single UH-1C Huey featured in Vietnam MedEvac.

If you want to be a gunship pilot, mowing down hoards of Peoples Army or North Vietnam troops in a hail of rocket fire, well, move on. This title is designed for the virtual pilot who wants to brave enemy fire to help his fellow man.

Considering all the features mentioned and the bargain price, this program might be worth picking up if you need to satisfy a fix for rotary-wing flight. Be warned, however, that once the novelty wears off, there isn’t a lot of substance behind this game. Vietnam MedEvac has all the replay value of yesterday’s breakfast cereal milk.



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