Air Support
arcade gamesstrategy gamesshoot’em up
Single helicopter has to provide air support to defense lines during a frontal attack of enemy robots.
Air Support shows a futuristic conflict, during which we are put in control of a single helicopter, and we fly over the battleground to provide the close air support for our robots (the blue ones) while they fight the enemy robots (white ones). Enemy has advantage in numbers, which makes our role so important - using bombs we can destroy few attacking robots at a time, but the robots are not the only danger - there are also twirlers that advance on the ground and are deadly to our robots (although it is not explained what they actually are) and also, behind the enemy lines there are rocket launchers. The launchers are dangerous because on one hand they fire ground-to-ground missiles that destroy our robots, but also and when we try to attack them, they are armed with ground-to-air missiles that can destroy our helicopter.
Apart from air support we also can give commands to our troops to relocate or change formation, but also we have the airlift option, in which we can pack up to 16 robots aboard our helicopter and drop them somewhere else. The game has two modes - arcade (with the twirlers and rocket launchers) and strategy (with only the infantry robots involved). There is also difference in equipment of our helicopter - in strategy game we have only 30 bombs, in arcade mode we start with 30, but every minute we receive extra 10 bombs.
Also, the game have several scenarios - in some of them we are facing frontal assault of enemy forces, in others we have to break through enemy lines or take over the enemy bases. The game also had settings to choose your own difficulty level (f.e. how many robots the enemy will have).
Simple idea for the game made it easy to play, but with time, and exploring the options available, the game gains a lot of depth. You have to analyse the terrain to create a bottleneck that would increase your chances of defending the line, you have to constantly circle around the battle ground to spot the danger and be aware of the progress of the battle.
Air Support was one of the overlooked gems of the early strategy games, it was challenging and gave enough options to keep you busy for a while, just replaying the same scenarios with different settings.
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User rating: 5 based on 1 votes
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Air Support videos
Air Support screenshots
Air Support keyboard shortcuts
FIRE - drop bomb
1-9 - choosing robot units (to give them commands)
SPACE - switch selection to robot unit with highest number of robots (to give them commands)
RETURN - switch selection to robot unit with lowest number of robots (to give them commands)
F - pause
G - command for selected robots unit to group around helicopter current position
S - command for selected robots unit to form a horizontal line on helicopter current position
U - command for selected robots unit to climb aboard the helicopter
D - command for robots aboard the helicopter to disembark
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