Arctic Talon

You fly the gunship. Everything else on the map is somebody's problem to solve, and most of it is shooting at you. Arctic Talon is a nine-mission campaign flown over one frozen sea: pack ice with open leads through it, floes big enough to land a FARP on and thin ice that will not hold you, a shipping lane, and a heliport the enemy took before you arrived. The ice is the map. You will learn to read it from the air, because the game never tells you which floe is solid. THE CAMPAIGN Find the listening posts on the pack. Sling four tanks out to a floe and set it up as a base. Put a team on the enemy's heliport at night, low and unseen, and cover them once they are on the ice. Take that heliport, hold it against a counterattack, and know when to leave. Hunt a submarine in a whiteout you cannot see the horizon through. Cut the supply line. Then finish the boat that has been under you the whole time, before she launches. THE HANGAR Ten aircraft: the AH-64 Apache, T-129 ATAK, Mi-24 Hind, Mi-28 Havoc, RAH-66 Comanche, Ka-52 Alligator, AH-1W Cobra, AH-6 Little Bird, the UH-60M Black Hawk and the Hava Börü. The last two are not for sale at any price — they are what you are given for finishing the campaign, and they arrive when the last mission is behind you. Each one flies differently, carries differently and takes damage differently. Paint them how you like: seven schemes and a glass tint, remembered per aircraft. THE FLYING Two thumbs. The left ring is the cyclic; the right pad is height and sideslip. Cannon, guided missiles, rockets and air-to-air are a ring around the fire button, and only the ones your aircraft actually carries are drawn. Flares defeat a heat-seeker if you put them out before it arrives rather than after. Auto-lock takes what is in front of you and lets go once you have flown past it. There is a hook underneath for lifting armour onto ice it can hold, and room in the cabin for the people you came to collect. A blizzard is not a filter over the screen. It takes the top off your speed, shakes the airframe and hides the thing you are looking for, and one mission is flown entirely inside one. WHAT IS FREE The training range and the first three missions — including the night insertion — the skirmish and the endless mode, and four aircraft: the Apache, the T-129 ATAK, the Mi-24 Hind and the Mi-28 Havoc. Enough to learn the aircraft, see the map, and decide. One purchase opens the rest. No currency, no subscription, no advertising, no loot boxes, and nothing else is ever asked for. Plays offline. No account, no sign-in, no registration.