It may sound like a bad '60s matinee horror movie, but Werewolf Vs. Comanche is actually a new multiplayer shooter from NovaLogic, based on its popular Comanche helicopter game. And before I go any further, let me clear one thing up. Even though these are helicopters modeled after the real thing, I will not be referring to them as simulations. Calling them simulations got NovaLogic into some hot water with purists when the original Comanche was released, and to my amazement they still seem to be pushing these games as real simulations. The fact is that these games are more arcade than simulation, and if you play something like Apache you'll understand what a REAL helicopter sim is. But even though both Comanche and Werewolf aren't for-real sims, I love 'em to death anyway. They feature super graphics, lots of nifty features, and teeth-grinding action few other games can touch.
Werewolf Vs. Comanche is actually two games packaged together - the stand-alone Werewolf game and the stand-alone Comanche game. Comanche is basically the original repackaged with a few new features and lots of new scenarios, and Werewolf is basically Comanche, same graphics and playing style, except it's played using the Russian bad-boy helicopter called the Werewolf. The individual games are virtually identical in look and play to the original Comanche, especially the new Comanche game. The Werewolf is different in look of the cockpit, but all of the controls and weapons are basically the same, and the terrain is the same. There are slight differences in the way the helicopters fly, but nothing really very noticeable. In a nice touch, all of the voices have been done in Russian accents for the Werewolf.
For those of you who've not had the pleasure of playing Comanche, this is a game based on the experimental attack helicopter known as the RAH-66 Comanche. The Comanche is a high-performance vehicle designed to take out armored ground targets, but it can also hold its own in the air if it has to. Armed with a turreted 20mm Gatling gun, AGM-114 Hellfires, AIM-92 Stingers and 70MM Rockets, it's designed to be the deadliest helicopter in existence. Its main competition is the venerable KA-50 Kamov Hokum Werewolf, which carries basically the same armament. Both the Comanche and Werewolf games feature NovaLogic's patented voxel space technology which gives the terrain a very realistic feel. You can get right down inside canyons, fly between narrow mountain passes, survey the action from on top of a mountain ridge, all of which are perfect for these kind of helicopters. But again, these games aren't strict simulations - you don't blow up if you run into the side of a mountain - you just kind of bounce off (but you do take damage), there's no ability to counter-rotate in case of engine failure, and you just aren't held to the precise aerodynamics that would be present with a real chopper. It's very much an arcade style of game, but the action is fast and furious, and it has that one feature that's more important than any other: it's just plain fun.
Perhaps the greatest new feature since the original Comanche is the addition of refueling bases. In the original, if you ran low on fuel or weapons you were pretty much out of luck. But in these new games, some scenarios have refueling bases where you can get more fuel, more weapons and badly needed repairs. Finding these bases is easy through the use of waypoints on the compass. Using these bases are simply a matter of landing on the heli-pad: just position your ship over the pad, kill the throttle and hit ground. The ground crew will start refueling, rearming and repairing your ship automatically. The more attention you need, the more time it will take, but you can take off at any time during these repairs.
It's great to get both of these games in one package, but the real fun is hooking the games up via network or modem. You can network up to eight players in different combinations of Comanches and Werewolfs. Here at IE we hooked it up on the network and it's just about the easiest game to network I've ever played. Playing was as easy as starting up the game and choosing the multiplayer function from the game menu - the game takes care of everything else. It was a real no-brainer that even the non-techies among us here could figure out. Once we got into the game everything ran super smooth. The only real problem was the fact that there is no talk function to communicate with each other while playing. If you're playing teams over the modem there's really no way of establishing strategy. If you're playing as individuals, there's no way to taunt your opponent.
Playing in multiplayer mode is a lot like Doom in the fact that if a player is killed, they're just reset at their home base to play some more. In the single-player version of the game, when you die the mission is just plain over. But in multiplayer mode, the game continues until the mission goal is completed. In playing as a team that means killing all of the objectives, but playing against another human is where things start to get interesting. When humans play opposite each other, the ground forces are broken up into two sides with each player trying to destroy the opponent's forces. The game is over when one side's forces are destroyed, then a screen comes up showing the results of battle. That's fun, but if only two humans are going to play, team play is where the most fun is. Multiple human players make playing against each other is really fun due to the strategies the teams can use against each other.
I suppose the big question is whether or not to buy this package if you already have Comanche. The Werewolf game isn't that much different from the Comanche game, so if you're only going to play single-player missions, you'd really only be getting more scenarios (60 Comanche missions, 30 Werewolf missions, 30 multiplayer missions) plus the new refueling feature. If you're going to be playing against human opponents or don't already have Comanche, get this package! It's incredible fun, with a great blend of arcade action and technical realism. Don't expect a hard-core simulation because these games simply weren't designed to be that, regardless of what the box says. But it's still one of the premier action games available, and this new package makes it just that much better.
