Gunship! is a helicopter that is a cross between an action game like Battlefield 2/3/4 and a simulation. The strength of the game lies in its detailed environment, especially the inclusion of trees. But the weakness of the game is that it does not have realistic cockpit details such as the radar warning receiver, or a tactical situation display. It doesn't have much of anything that a real apache has except a decent radar and a halfway functioning radar warning receiver. I say the radar warning receiver is halfway functioning, because it displays radar threats but is not give any audio cues as to a radar lock or a radar missile launch.
Despite this, gunship has a lot the other realistic helicopter games like Jane's Longbow 2 do not. In Jane's Longbow 2, it is too easy to lock on to an enemy vehicle and destroy a whole string of them. The enemy vehicles are not hard to acquire and not hard to destroy in massive numbers all at once. There is comparatively little ground clutter to make it difficult to lock onto a vehicle. Yes in Jane's Longbow 2, there is quite a bit of bombs of the terrain.
But the bumps in the terrain are not like the ground clutter in extent to "Gunship!". The vehicles in Gunship! move behind and out of trees quite often. You actually have to wait for a good number of seconds for a vehicle to get to where you can get a clear shot of it, because the vehicles are almost constantly moving into and out trees. Furthermore, you have to climb to a certain altitude to clear a hill in the terrain. Whereas in Jane's Longbow 2, there is just super tall mountains that are much of a barrier. Small bumps in the terrain are present but do not result in difficulty locking and firing at the target.
Furthermore, the terrain clutter is so large that it is difficult to get a clear long-range shot in Gunship! while in Jane's Longbow 2, it is easy. Furthermore, this creates a huge problem for infrared SAMs, because it is difficult to attack vehicles at a very long range.
The missiles in Gunship! are also launched much quicker and more aggressively while in Jane's Longbow 2, they are launched much slower. You can't dance around missile launches in Gunship!, while in Jane's Longbow 2, you can keep dodging missile launch after missile launch, once you know the pattern to dodging them.
There is also a lot to like in the way vehicles are targeted in Gunship! In Gunship!, there is good, smooth zooming in and out of the terrain and the target. You need to zoom in and out, because the obstacles are so large and numerous, that you need to make sure the missile will not miss and run into them. The radar also picks up destroyed vehicles, which may be a realistic feature that only Gunship! has. You need to make sure using a zooming camera that a vehicle on radar is not destroyed before firing.
What is great in Gunship is that you are forced to make a lot of use of the Gunner/Weapon co-pilot seat and not just the pilot seat. In the Gunner/Weapon co-pilot seat, you can issue commands such as turn to this heading, pop up, and dive for cover, stop, and go 1/3 or 2/3 or full speed ahead. I like spending a lot of time in the co-pilot seat issuing commands to the pilot. But it is also very easy to quickly switch to the pilot seat if you need to make a violent quick, maneuver to avoid a missile.
But you can make a lot of pre-maneuvers to maneuver before a missile launch as a preventative measure. So you can spend a lot of time in the co-pilot Gunner/Weapon co-pilot seat, which is a nice change to other simulations.
The terrain also creates a lot of variation between missions. But keep in mind that the lack of realism in the cockpit, radar, and other avionics features is lacking. The physics of the helicopter is also lacking. You can advoid missiles by diving steep enough at a high altitude, which is very unrealistic. A lack of a audio launch warning is an even greater let down.
But the focus on stealth, cover, and making it difficult to use hit targets because of widely variable terrain makes this my favorite helicopter game. But Jane's Longbow 2 is not far behind because of its physics and realistic cockpit features.
Overal Gameplay: 8.8