poorly design game.

First off, I was a huge fan of the Comanche series back in the day as most other reviewers have stated. Unfortunately that probably set my expectations a bit high and ended up making the whole experience worse.

Controls are clunky at best - I tried a couple controllers, KB/M, and my space-sim twin stick setup worked best (VKB Gladiator HOSAS), which is honestly a pretty big ask for a $20 game. Once I got halfway decent at flight by spending a bunch of time on the "shooting range", I actually enjoyed the first mission for a while. Then the nostalgia and novelty wore off and the game got boring *FAST*. Combat is pretty arcade-y with zero strategy involved - hit the other guy while trying to not get hit yourself, basic stuff. This can still make for a fun game if done right, but that ain't the case here.

Now for the worst part - the damn drone. Again, this could have made for a cool little diversion once in a while if implemented correctly, but you'll come to hate it halfway through the first mission. The drone sections feel half-baked, totally ruin the pace of the game, and become tedious pretty much immediately. Seriously - any merits this game may have are completely ruined by this stupid feature.

Last, I hate to complain about the dated and poorly optimized graphics (Really? Mobile-game visuals in 2021 with FRAME DROPS in certain areas?) as good gameplay will always trump pretty eye candy in my book, but you'll find neither in this title.

TL/DR: Save your money, even on sale for $5 you'll be bored within an hour, or so frustrated with the controls you won't play at all.

And f@#k that stupid drone.

Is this game about a Comanche helicopter or am I playing a drone simulator?

In the first "real" mission, after almost every fight, I am bound in some way to do something with a drone (which the Comanche can spawn in infinite ways). In most cases, I have to fly through some ventilation shafts and "hack" a panel. It's also immediately noticeable how "stupid" the AI behaves. In one case, you have to infiltrate a base with the drone to open a gate. However, the soldiers are already waiting for the drone in a kill corridor, but don't move an inch and behave as if they have no intelligence and can simply be eliminated. Even the soldier AI from Comanche 4 in 2001 (which was 23 years ago!) was better than this. They didn't even bother to give the copilot a full model, the poor guy only has an upper body, not even arms. I noticed that within 5 minutes in first person...

What also always pleased or interested me about Comanche was that destroyed vehicles, helicopters, boats etc. with their destroyed model were still present in the game world, here helicopters just explode and that's it. To come back to Comanche 4, even here it was the case in 2001 that destroyed boats / ships, even helicopters left oil stains in the water. In Comanche 2021, they sink and that's it.

Sorry, but the game is being returned. For me as a fan of the Comanche series, even 5€ is unfortunately still too much. It might be fun for some people that are just looking for a quick way to have fun, but for people like me, who have played the older titels this is not it..

Would be better if you could buy the old games on GoG without having to struggle to get the games to run on modern systems.