I'm something of an old hand when it comes to flight sims, which is why I found it so easy to lay into GUARDIANS (commissioned by the Indian Air Force, apparently!) below - but temper any criticism with knowledge that the developers openly admit that this is only part of the game, with the rest due to follow in 'October'. Hopefully some of my criticisms can be addressed by then too. Still, it's free to download, it's relatively tiny, and there are no ads, so why not give it a try?
'Guardians' is the most realistic and graphic rich mobile air combat game, which breaks the cliche by bringing the first Campaign based air combat game play on the mobile platform. It also sets new benchmark in graphic and game play optimization techniques and has the most elaborate collection of flying missions ever seen on a mobile platform.
'Guardians' puts the player in the hot seat as an Indian Air Force Combat Pilot and takes you through one training and ten combat missions. The player learns to fly the SU 30 high performance jet and subsequently flies as a Mi 17 pilot. While the training mission teaches the player the basics of flying training, the two operational missions lay down the foundation for the story in which war clouds are hanging over India and Zaruzia, a country planning to wage war on India. The eight subsequent missions will see a full fledged air war between Zaruzia and India and will feature all operational mission profiles as flown by the IAF and feature the SU 30, M2000, Tejas, Phalcon AWACS, C130, Mi 17, Mi 35 and ALH Dhruv aircraft. notes
Here's a walkthrough of GUARDIANS in action, such as it is:
A sequence of cut scenes introduces the app, with slightly overdone patriotism, perhaps?
The main menu is a bit sparse at the moment, October's update will see multi-player and more added....
A sequence of levels lead you through the basics...
Simulation fans shouldn't get their hopes up - you can put on afterburners and climb up, but then you just see how limited the modelled terrain is, currently!!
Plenty to fiddle with in terms of simulation behaviour...
The UI is good, from viewpoint to HUD to radar to controls. The viewpoint nudge doesn't work properly, though, plus there's no in-cockpit view - yet.
No guided weapons are present yet, either - you only have dumb bullets and rockets - the red squares above just denote targets and don't represent any kind of 'lock'!
DOOM-style, as you're hit by anti-aircraft fire, your view colours in red (i.e. with blood!)
Landing is, like the rest of the flight model, rather simplified and easy, but hey - it's a relief not to kill all the bad guys and then lose it on a shaky landing(!)
You can download GUARDIANS here in the Store. Hey, it's currently free, so if the full game ends up being commercial, maybe you get to upgrade for free too? (No promises!)
The developers promise eight more full multi-level missions, plus guided missiles and bombs, multi-player and an in-cockpit mode, all coming in October. So a while to wait yet. Think of this version as a playable demo!