I was one of the first people to buy the Gazelle as I love DCS's helicopter physics, but we're several years down the road now and it has not made real progress with the flight model. So that is disappointing, but what I mean by "positive attitude" is just that if you're going to buy it, just accept it for what it is now, because it's probably not going to change much in the future.

I got into a cat and mouse game with a Gazelle pilot a few weeks ago - he was in the Gazelle and I was in a Combined Arms Shilka. He was wiping out an airfield I was protecting, I had tanks and urals being blown up everywhere, but he was flying under the trees so I couldn't see him.

His teammates were buzzing around nearby in A10's and Hornets, and there was a Bombcat around as well. They were dropping occasional LGB's on my units and the A10 was shooting mavericks. While I was trying to deal with those by spreading out my AAA and SAM perimeter, this guy was sneaking in close and wreaking serious havoc, units were dropping every minute or so, and he'd just keep going to a FARP somewhere, reload and come back to deal more carnage.

I hopped into a Shilka and moved up to the edge of a forest. I shut down the engine to listen and could kind of hear his general direction and headed that way, then flanked to the right edge of the forest. When I came around the edge of the forest I was rewarded with a beautiful side-on view of him hovering there. I guess he was shooting wire guided missiles at my airfield units while in hover autopilot, and he must not have been looking around because he didn't seem to see me. I fired a big long burst at him and sent him crashing to the ground.

It was a pretty memorable experience, and one of the reasons I think DCS can be so fun sometimes. Combined Arms is nowhere even close to the fidelity of something like Steel Beasts, which is something I've owned and loved for 20 years now. But it still manages to be great fun when you set yourself up for success. The Gazelle too does not have great flight modelling but if you hop in with the primary goal of flying carefully and engaging targets, it can be a really rewarding experience. When you go up against a clever person controlling units on the ground it becomes that much more fun as the entire dynamic of the engagement changes, no human player will sit still and let you kill him like the AI units usually will. It forces you to be mobile, make use of clever maneuvering and tactics.

With the sale on, I'd say it's worth it to grab. It is a little bit like a mixup between the Kiowa and Longbow of the old Longbow 2 sim. Very lightweight but decent armament. Will not take much damage so you need to avoid that by using its agility and speed.