Imagine being given the freedom to fight for the forces of democracy against tyranny or the forces of tyranny against democracy. Imagine being given one of the most sophisticated battle helicopters known to military science to achieve this (ig)noble aim. Imagine longer, Coala is here..

Coala is a helicopter flight sim with a difference. Traditional flight sims rely on all manner of technical frippery and detail to maintain their authenticity and sense of realism. Coala ignores all that.

Instead, Coala relies on the credibility and realism of the battlefield. Taking place with the confines of a three dimensional, finite, wraparound world, each combat mission and scenario witnesses the forces of the East pitched against the forces of the West.

Dispensing with traditions, in Coala you are totally neutral and can choose which side to fight for. The choice is even open to fight against both sides. Although not recommended for obvious reasons, taking everyone on is the ultimate test of the player's combat ability.

As is to be expected of a pseudo flight sim, Coala takes place within a three dimensional world. The player starts the game at a Western base within the cockpit of a battle copter; there are four different types to be flown in all.

Controls are simple and easily picked up. All that needs to be done to take to the air is to give the engine enough collective to overcome gravity. The chopper will take off and the player can start moving about. The easiest method of controlling the chopper requires use of the mouse.

Mouse control quickly becomes intuitive and offers the unrestrictive freedom of analogue responsiveness. Even more emancipating is the 'virtual' cockpit. By pressing the right mouse button and holding it down, an unrestricted three dimensional view can be taken. That is, the chopper continues on its path and the view simulates the pilot looking around him.

This is particularly useful when lining up targets. Rather than having to keep the whole chopper in line, the pilot only really needs to get close to the target. From there, it's just a matter of moving the cross hairs of the currently selected weapon system to line up with the unfortunate victim's vehicle.

Tricky to use at first, it soon becomes a cake walk. At times, depending on the enemy you're taking out, it almost feels like an unfair advantage. But not quite. For there is no such thing as an unfair advantage in war. And that's what Coala is - total war.

Each of the missions and scenarios has a life of its own. If the players chooses to take no part, the battle will still be decided by the computer participants fighting each other. Part of the strength and believability of Coala belongs to the internal dynamics of the battlefield and the artificial intelligence of the battlefield's protagonists.

If desired, this artificial intelligence can be observed by choosing to view any of the planes, choppers, tanks, trucks, etc. in action. It's just a simple manner of selecting the requisite view from the keyboard and cycling through all of the participants until you reach the one you want to follow. It's possible, therefore, to fly with an enemy plane that's just about to take you out with a heat-seeking missile.

The beauty of the views is the ability to look all around the chosen vehicle in a full 360 degree, three dimensional pan. This flexibility can also give the discerning player an insight into the tactics adopted by adversaries, so that more effective counter measures can be taken when going head-to-head.

Of course, there's a pay-off for all of this artificial intelligence and 3D power - that of processor speed. After all, what's on offer here is more than previously offered by traditional sims. Other than Dawn Patrol and Overlord, no other sim has provided a 'virtual' cockpit. That Coala's is the best and easiest to use is beyond doubt.

But there's a trade-off to be made between graphical detail, processor speed and frame rate. Power-challenged Amigas like the 500 and 600 need a 68020 with 2Mb minimum to run Coala. A1200 owners will find that some Fast memory is desirable to avoid a jerky effect.

Luckily, the programmers have included an option screen whereby features such as ground and object detail can be set high to low on a scale 1 to 10. Other processorhungry cosmetics, such as horizon detail and viewing distance, are also customisable - so a standard vanilla A1200 runs Coala satisfactorily, though not brilliantly.

If you have the requisite hardware (and even if you don't, you can still win it - check out our Coala compo on 36) the question needing to be asked is: "Is Coala worth buying?"

The answer has to be yes, but with some reservations. The game, despite some excellent features, looks old-fashioned - no texture maps and a limited palette. The terrain is flat - no mountains or hills to hide behind.

The mission structure is a series of self-contained one-offs, giving the feeling that there is no cohesive sense of progress and that there's no 'bigger' picture within the game. This gives the whole thing the feeling of a glorified, although thoroughly enjoyable, shoot-'em-up.

Despite that, I would still buy Coala. You can create your own fully customisable "What if?" missions. It makes intelligent use of the Amiga hardware and it enables you to pit your wits against the artificial intelligence routines of the programmers.

Not very good enough to be considered a classic, it hints at the sort of "Next Generation" games a properly powered Amiga is capable of and, as such, deserves to be bought in numbers. Hopefully, the commercial success that the game deserves will encourage the programmers to inject more cohesion and believability into the package for Coala 2.

Picture the scene - it is the evening and you pay your four quid to go to the World's Best Cinema, and sit down with plenty of leg room, a massive carton of juice and a popcorn bucket big enough to hide in. The banner of überfascist James Ferman and his BBFC crones announces the movie, and the expectant spines is only broken by the polite cough of the usher's 22 calibre 'Hush Puppy' pistol as he executes anyone opening many pockets of sweeps or crops. The film starts, and the initial surge of music is so atmospheric that the hairs on your arms bristle up and shred your shirt.

It starts off on an extreme close-up of something heartbreakingly tiny yet beautiful - a tearstained Edelweiss maybe or perhaps Bob the Hamster. And then, with a dizzyingly fast crane shot accompanied by perhaps the finest orchestral swell of all time, the camera rises up and presents us, the viewers, with the most exciting intense and undeniably most expensive vista ever timed.

Perhaps it is an ancient battle that makes the incredible battle sequences from Braveheart look like a dinner time rush in the playground. Or maybe it is a sea of satin-clad mourners at the funeral of a great man: a sea of humanity that makes the crowd scenes from Ghandi look like a bus queue for the number 125 Nempnet Thrubwell. Whatever it is, you are in no doubt that it is the best start of any film ever, and that you will think about it on your deathbed in preference to the masses of blubbing grandchildren who are packed into the room to watch you wheeze your last one.

Then the camera starts to slowly pan, taking in more and more of the terrain until you are in no doubt that the action spreads in all directions and as far as the eye can see. It is awesome, and you stare dumbstruck, your popcorn forgotten, your juice spilling into your lap, your mouth agape as the camera completes first one, then two, then three revolutions. But by four, it is not as impressive and you are waiting for something to happen, for a snatch of dialogue or a hint of plot or characterisation. But nothing. Two hours later, you are still watching the same slowly panning shot, and then the film ends.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine how you would feel? Can you imagine the disappointment of seeing the best opening ever tainted by the complete lack of any follow up? Then steel yourself, hombre - Coala stirs up exactly the same set of emotions. It looks like it is going to be great, it is initially great and it SHOULD BE GREAT, dammit. But it is not.

As a game engine, Coala is faultless. Coala knows it is a game and does not bother painstakingly recreating all those follies of real helicopters that muck up your fun. If you whack up the collective and take your chopper up to 60 metres, then that is where it is going to stay unless you pull a really frantic manoeuvre. In Gunship 2000 (AP28, 85%), it is almost impossible to stay at one height which combined with the rolling terrain means you spend as long avoiding the ground as you do trying to kill things.

Coala excels at blowing things up. Although you can attack head one, your view of the ground is hidden by the airframe, so it is best to go into a turn around the target and look out of the side window. You can attack like this because of the Virtual Cockpit™, and because your guided weapons will lock on and your nose cannon is not fixed forwards. While virtual cockpits are a good idea in flight sims, they are usually poorly implemented and rely on you manually turning your virtual head using the keyboard while trying to try using a joystick or mouse.

The Rowan games Overlord and Dawn Patrol use an excellent automatic look which keeps the target centre screen, but Coala manages to strike a happy medium in that yes, it is manual, but because it uses the mouse and the second button, you can easily switch between flying and moving your view.

A standard A1200 runs the game perfectly well with all the shadows and extra detail on. Apparently it is super-smooth on an accelerated A1200 or any of the big box Amigas, but according to our reader surveys, hardly any of you lot own them, so we will waste no further words on the subject.

This is all mechanics though, the camera work and cinematography detailed in my rather overlong and tenuous film analogy intro. A good game needs a good engine to power it and heck yes, Coala is faultless, but it also needs a plot, and it is here that you can experience a sickening jolly moment.

Coala bils itself as a 3D battlefield helicopter action simulator, which is obscure enough to set alarm bells ringing. To be lenient, Coala has a fairly 'open-ended mission structure, although to be blunt, it has not got any structure at all.

Most flight sims give you missions and flight plans, and have the enemy following predictable routes to and from predictable objectives, so if you die, you can restart with the confidence that it will be much the same next time. In Coala though, all the vehicles have a level of AI which means that they do not just plough through set patterns, they react to nearby vehicles, so by just flying around, you affect the outcome of the battle.

Flight sims normally make the world revolve around your aircraft, but in this you are just another participant, and while I admire the attempt at making you that humble, I cannot say much for the implementation of the idea.

Suppose you can see a mass of tanks from both sides milling around a town. You whiz off towards the area in the hope of getting a few kills, but often by the time you reach the battle, one side's wiped the other one out. And then once the battle has been raging for ten minutes or so and you are on the winning side, all you get is a rather plain text screen detailing your kills and total casualties. There is no feeling that you have performed well, or pulled off a tricky assignment, and even though the missions sound different on the briefing screens, they quickly blur together.

Okay, so there are offensive and defensive missions, but what is the point of defending your base against tank attacks when you can still land and refuel even when the base is crawling with the enemy? And although you can choose a customise option and dictate that vehicles you want on the battlefield, you cannot place them in set areas or formations, so they are left to make up their own mind where they want to go.

You do not even have a map to see where the roads, town, rivers, and most importantly, targets are, which means that when the battle has been raging for ages, there are so few things to shoot at that you either get bored or escape out of the game.

And that is the problem. While Coala seems to have everything going for it as a game, it gets nowhere fast: being told to go out, pick a side and shoot things is fine for a few goes, but after that you are gagging for a point to it all, for a bridge to blow up or a convoy to intercept.

But instead of an attack on a heavily defended enemy base or a rush past fighter cover to blast a squadron of lumbering transport helicopters, you get more of the same - unplanned attacks and random flying around.

Which is, of course, a great shame. Like Virtual Karting last month, it seems that Coala has been put out a few months early and that it is not quite finished. The mechanics are all in place, but the game lacks depth and the presentation is minimal to say the least. Whack in a map and 30 decent preset missions to complement this freeplay structure and Empire would have had a 90 percent plus game on their hands. As it is, they have got a massively impressive glimpse of what could have been, or could very easily still be in Coala 2. Should they ever bother to do it.

The curtain closes on Coala far sooner than it should do, simply because you have seen everything it can offer far too quickly. And that is frustrating, because a game that is this sound technically deserves to be more fun. It also deserves a harder name. Why could it not have been called 'McDonnell Douglas Death Hawk EBN-20' thus obeying the laws of all previous flight sims?

Simulators have died on their feet in recent years. I think this is a shame as I went through a phase in the late 80s of single-handedly fighting off the red menace in subs, planes, tanks and helicopters.

Coala is just another example of how bad things have become. There's a total lack of imagination and to make things worse, technically this game is appalling.

Pear shaped
As for the playability, well, in relation to other chopper sims, this is the poor cousin who doesn't even get invited to family funerals. Thunderhawk (a Core Design heli-sim from Core Design from a few years back) was spectacularly playable, looked fantastic and absolutely haired along. On top of that it was easy to get into and, more importantly, ran on an A500.

Now I know the A1200 can't compete with a 486 PC when it comes to the 3D graphics required for simulations, but when I look back to what programmers were squeezing out of the A500 a few years back there's no way on Earth I can accept a game like Coala.

In fact, the only real improvement over old sims I could find was the inclusion of a virtual cockpit. This lets you twist your pilot's head around to almost neck-snapping point to see what's going on around your 'copter. This is something PC owners have had in their flight sims for years now and they'll tell you that it's a next-to-useless feature anyway. So including it was a bit of a waste effort.

Even the user-friendly control system can't compensate for the fact that trying to pilot a helicopter is a bit like trying to fly a large brick through a hurricane. I'm no aviation expect, but I've seen that bloke who covers the airshows on telly presenting programs where they've got military helicopters looping-the-loop.

In Coala you're bloody lucky if you can get the damn thing to execute a three-point lateral turn in under ten seconds. It's so unresponsive. The only real way to kill anything is by slowing right down, rotating slowly and hoping you can get your shot off before being blasted. It's pathetic.

True irony
It's ironic, really, that your real life Koala is a small, meek mammal prone to stuffing itself on eucalyptus leaves and passing out, because that's the kind of effect this game has when you play it.

My advice to any new Amiga-owner (and there should be a few out there new) is, if you want a simulation, raid some budget software libraries for a few of the games I've mentioned here. They're everything this isn't and a hell of a lot cheaper as well.