Giveaway of the Day - Helic

In Brief

I’m really pleased to see this one has been repeated again as I’ve lost it twice now following reformats and a hard drive failure. This game is part of a series of games of this genre that cover the world wars, modern avionics and helicopters. It was originally given away back in October 2010 and received a positive 50% of votes out of 414 votes. There were 39 comments which can be seen HERE, then again earlier this yar back in February where it received a positive 63% out of 321 votes with 37 comments which can be read HERE. The game is basically an arcade flyer with 3D graphics. You can fly through stylized environments destroying ground targets and shooting down enemy planes and helicopters. Controls are very simple, with flying accomplished either via a keyboard or mouse.

Good news is you can also use Joysticks, in fact joysticks work the way you’d expect then to work, i.e. pull back on the stick to increase in altitude (nose up) push forwards on the stick to reduce altitude (nose down). Mouse controls need to be reversed, but once you get used to it, the helicopter is easy to fly.

Also good news; if you have an X-Box controller for windows that will also work so long as you install the drivers for it. You can get those from Microsoft or various other sites. Make sure you get the 64 bit version if you have a 64 bit platform and 32 bit if your running the 32 bit platform.

Helic

The game downloads to a 47.8MB zipped file containing a read me and a dual activation and setup module as well as a .gcd security file (the addition of the gcd file explains why the download size has increased from 42.2Mb to 47.8MB). (The first time this was given away we were given a registration code and the set up file was at least 20MB more).

To newcomers this means to install and register the game just click on the giveaway wrapped set up file and select your installation path (if you wish the game to go to somewhere other than the default path). Once installed the game is automatically registered The installed games footprint is 68.9Mb in size (this is also around 30MB smaller than the first time this was given away, but the same as last Februaries version). On starting the game It installs to:

C:\Games\GAME_Helic\Helic.Exe

The game plays okay on XP Pro with SP3 32 Bit, Vista Home Basic 64 bit and Win 7 Pro 64 bit. I’ve not installed my copy of Win 8 yet so can’t say whether it will work on win 8.

No shortcut is installed to the desktop or the start men programs folder nor is there an uninstaller installed so to uninstall you just have to delete the installed folder.

Introduction

Players can try their flying and shooting skills at three campaigns: Islands, Europe and the Middle East. As they complete levels, players gain access to new, more maneuverable helicopters, more powerful enemies and unexpected surprises. Easy game controls allow new players to quickly get in the thick of things. In addition to helicopters, some missions can be completed at the controls of combat fighters. Survival mode offers a rapid-fire shooting gallery option for game play. Ready for takeoff? Wheels up!

Reference accessed HERE 2nd Oct 2010

The Game

Helic uses the same games engine as previous Fly games that have been given away such as Sky Aces: World at War, Sky Aces: The Red Baron and Sky aces: Cold War, though the game looks to have been improved somewhat. The environments are much the same with perhaps a few more buildings. All ground buildings are destructible. Flying is easy, you can use either the mouse or the keyboard to control your plane. To fire weapons use the left and right mouse buttons (chain gun and rockets). You can pick up health packs and resupply ammo and rockets by flying over bonus coins.

The game has two modes; the first is standard play which is the main campaign, where you start with a training flight then are taken through missions that take you through different locations that include European Skies, Islands and Afghanistan. In survival mode you can choose where to go from the above locations as well as choose the time of day, which include, Early morning, Sunny, Cloudy, Evening and night, you can also choose three levels of escort from Easy, Standard and Armada. Both modes have three levels of skill, Tourist, Warrior and Hardcore. The difference between the three is the number of enemies you have in the sky at any one time.

There are three helicopters to choose from, the first being the only one unlocked at the start of the game. The demo only gave me 15 minutes of play, so I didn’t get the opportunity to find out how you unlock the other two choppers. You get a Gazelle Eurocopter, a SA320 Puma and a UH34 Choctaw helicopter.

You can change the screen resolution between 800 x 600 x 32 to 1920 x 1080 x 32 with 30 different resolutions to choose from. There’s also a quality slider, which is useful if your computer isn’t so powerful. If you get any lag, reduce the screen resolution and quality settings to a point where the lag disappears. There’s also a music toggle which allows you to turn off the in game music if you wish.

Controls

• Mouse Movement – Direction
• Q/W/E – Turns
• WASD – Power/Strafe
• F1 – Display Help
• F2 – Display Map
• Up Arrow – Low speed
• Down Arrow – Full speed
• Left Arrow – Turn & Strafe Left
• Right Arrow – Turn & Strafe Right
• LMB – Machine gun
• RMB – Rockets

Features

• 10 helicopters based on actual models

• 3 campaigns, 20 fast-paced missions

• Survival quick game play mode

• Original soundtrack

System Requirements

- Windows 98/ME/XP/Vista
- Pentium III processor
- 256 Mb RAM
- 50 Mb hard drive space
- 32 Mb video memory
- Sound card
- DirectX 7

Conclusion

Overall I loved playing this game. It’s easy to pick up and hard to put down. Compared to my DCS: Black Shark Helicopter Simulation it’s the easiest helicopter game I’ve played in a long time; it’s similar in game play to the many freebies available from Gametop, MyPlayCity and FreeGamePick (see below, with two big differences, 1) … you are flying in an open 3D world (compared to flying in a scrolling environment) and 2) … All ground objects are destructible. The game is well made and an improvement on earlier games in this series (mentioned above). It’s reminiscent of some of the arcade flying shooters I remember playing many years ago in the arcades, but today’s game has much better graphics.

I think Helic is worth a good 8 out of 10 for ease of play and a well rounded campaign; however, I’m a little biased with respect to scoring this game; so some may think I’m overly generous.

Scoring

Download and installation – 10
Registration process – 10
Graphic Appearance in Game – 7+7
Audio – 7
Game Play – 9+8
Replayability – 7
Originality – 7

Total score 72 out of 90 which equates to 8 out of 10

I’ve scored this game quite high because I think it’s different from your run of the mill HOG’s, TM games and match threes, which have become the main stay of the arcade business. Though a burgeoning indie movement is slowly taking over (thankfully). It’s got some reasonable game play and is easy to pick up. As already mentioned elsewhere, it would have been much improved if you were able to reverse the mouse movement. I always crash when I first play this type of game after a break. (I’ve still got a couple of these from previous giveaways).

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More Games

If today’s game doesn’t take your fancy then check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last four years, many of which are excellent alternatives to their commercial cousins.

Steam has several games on sale at the moment including the 24 hr Steam deal which today Dogfight 1942 a game similar to todays game giveaway, but with far better graphics and game play. You’ll find DogFight HERE. It has 50% off it’s a steal at £5.99 (approx $9). There’s also two dlc’s available with 50% off.

This weekends big deals are the excellent sim game called Tropico 4 which you’ll find details of HERE. with 75% off the game and most of the DLC’s and 25% off the recently released DLC’s its a great bargain. There’s also a free weekend plus 50% off with another game ago called Awesomenauts a n acyion strategy platformer. rel=”nofollow”>Snapshot an indie platformer also has 50% off and there are at least another 20+ games with varying percentages off, ranging from 10% to 30%, including unreleased games like Hitman Absolution which is due for release any day (competing with the likes of Call of Duty which was released a few days ago and as always is one of the most expensive games on sale – it’ll cost you almost £90/$135 for the deluxe edition plus a season pass for future DLC) Another game to watch is the complete Saints Row the Third pack, with all DLC content plus the main game for only £29.99$45 that’s a saving of £50/$75 compared to what it costs at the moment. That will be available on the 17th November HERE. Oh yeah, nearly forgot, you can get Bioshock for free from Gamefly at the moment; check it out via the game giveaway forums HERE (I’m not sure whether the offer is only availble to those that installed the Beta client. If you owned any Direct 2 Drive games you’re likely to have installed the beta; then again it may be open to all.

Check out Gamersgates offers. There’s loads of 50% to 75% off offers (for example Cities in Motion, Grand Theft Auto , Dragonage Origins, Dragonage II, Sleeping Dogs, Super Meat Boy, Grotesque Tactics, AI Wars, Future Wars, Unstoppable Gorg, Trapped Dead, Need for Speed: The Run, Crash Time I & III, plus more. Some of which come with Steam keys. Gamefly and Desura also have a sale on as well.

I’ve also posted several links to sites where you’ll find loads of decent game deals. Just look in the Game Discussion sticky section for the thread.

This months Alawar game is still The Curse of Montezuma (despite being on for six weeks – hopefully they will change it for another soon). for those that are new to the game giveaway project you will need Alawar’s free game box to be able to download their free monthly game. this months is an excellent match three. You can download the game box HERE.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, you can see all of the live indie bundles that are available HERE . They don’t update it every day (Indie Gala X is showing as still live, but that ended a few days ago), still it’ll give you an idea as to whats still available. alternatively you can visit the giveawayoftheday Game discussion forums as all bundles are detailed there as well.

Also check out the latest game available on IndieGame stand HERE. You can pay as much as you want but no less than $1. The present game has just changed to Syder Arcade, which is a free scrolling, multi directional shoot ‘em up, an uncompromised old-school experience. There are several $5 bundles available from the Indie bundle site HERE, each bundle has three games. There’s quite a few decent deals over on Desura HERE also the latest Indie Royale: Harvest Bundle is in full swing with just over a day to run (ends on Sunday afternoon GMT) . Virtually all of the bundles mentioned above include a combination of Steam and Desura keys as well as DRM free copies or a combination of 1, 2 or all three. Sometimes you also get a choice of operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android) .Another Humble bundle called the Humble Bundle 4 Android was released last week. It still has five days to run and you can get nine excellent games (Splice, Eufloria, Waking Mars, Machinarium, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery, Avadon: The Black fortress Trilogy, Canabalt, Cogs, Sword & soldiers, and Zen bound 2. I paid around 4180 for the above games when they were initially released, now you can get all of them for just over $6. Definitely one to get. You can have PC and Android versions (as well as Mac and Linux versions). Also most l of the games have Steam keys as well as a downloadable DRM copy plus at least one comes with a Desura key.

You’ll find details of all the bundles still available over in the first two pages of the game discussion forums as well as several of the main game distributors that seem to have permanent sales HERE

Additional Helicopter/flight games

Please Read this before downloading any of the games I’ve linked to!

Please be aware that when installing games from MyPlayCity (MPC) you do have to install a toolbar and allow your browsers home page to be changed to MyPlayCities home page. The home page can be changed back once the game has been installed and you can turn off the toolbars by going into view and selecting toolbars. A drop down menu will list all of the toolbars you may have. Just uncheck the MPC toolbar. You can delete the toolbars by finding where the executable has been installed to and deleting it then going into the registry and deleting all registry entires associated with the toolbar. If you go ahead and install any MyPlayCity games and aren’t sure what to do please post a request in the forums where either i or one of the usual regulars will help you. Personally i don’t usually post links to these gaes, but they were already posted from back when MPC was clear of such practices.

As for Gametop, I think you can still uncheck the check-boxes that ask for permission to install toolbars and change your home page, but haven’t tried installing a Gametop game for over a year, so they to may have hanged their policy. All games from these distributors will open up your browser when you close any game that you got from them. This is a totally innocuous action that has no impact on your computer apart from opening your browser. Nothing is downloaded or taken from your computer when this happens. It’s just a tool the distributors have coded into the game to take you back to their web site. Just click on the X and it’s gone with no residuals left behind.

You can get several excellent helicopter games or similar from Gametop, for example:

Desert Hawk

Incinerate

Air Assault II

Air Assault

Also there’s some online examples such as Desert Fire online, Zenon Online, Helicopter Strike Online, which you can find via the following link, just look to the bottom of the page:

http://www.gametop.com/category/action.html

You can also get some helicopter games (some of which are the same as those from Gametop and FreeGamePick) from MyPlayCity, for example:

Helicopter Wars

Airforce Missions

Helicopter Game

Air Invasion; and you can get the following games from FreeGamePick for example:

Aerial Fire

Air Shark

Air Shark 2. Finally, there are several decent helicopter browser games which can be found HERE

If you like real helicopter sim’s a great game to buy is DCS: Black shark, which can be purchased either from Steam or Direct 2 Drive. If you consider there are nearly 300 key bindings for the game you can imagine how much of a simulation the game is. There are some older Helicopter sims that you can get from abandonware sites like Abandonia such as HIND – The Russian Combat Helicopter Simulation

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Problems:

If you have any problems with the game, either installation issues or getting the game to work check out the FAQ’s section over in the Game discussion forums. you can find it HERE

I have had a couple of Memory Access Violations while playing this game. If you get a Memory Access Violation (MAV) with an older game try the following fixes:

Run in admin mode

try using compatibility mode for XP

turn off UAC

What is a MAV?

A Memory Access Violation occurs when the program attempts to use something which does not actually exist or an error due to incorrect syntax being used for a command.

Calling commands on ‘entities’ (a line of code or discreet program within a program) which don’t exist is the most common cause of MAVs, but other common sources of MAVs include referring to images and sounds which don’t exist.

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed). It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

Request for Help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

What about W2k?

…………………….Moderator comment……………………….

I no longer have a copy of W2k or the ME editions installed. I got rid of them when I updated to XP so can’t confirm whether the game will work. (actually I think I still have my original ME disk but gave the W2K disk away.

It’s a free standing game so all it should cost you is a little time downloading, at a minimal cost in bandwidth of less than 50MB and deleting the installed folder if it doesn’t work.

When I say free standing, it means there’s no other files or registry entries related to this game apart from the original zip file, the installed game and the unpacked zip file with the setup read me and gcd file, plus a couple of registry entries related to the zip file. There’s no hidden folders or complex registry entries to remove.