A fun and simple helicopter sim where it proves how fun it is to blow stuff up.
The game has a fairly simple mission system: You're either given enemies to destroy, items to obtain, or people to save and bring to a Landing Zone. While doing this, you have to avoid enemy fire from various enemies such as helicopters, stealth boats, and SAM launchers. Your helicopter can only take so much damage, and if it loses armor or you run out of fuel, the helicopter goes crashing down.
To combat these enemies, there are various weapons to attack your targets, such as missiles, rockets, napalm launchers and bombs, and a machine gun turret. There are also friendly helicopters in some of the missions to help you out.
The missions themselves are incredibly short, expect to take on average 5 to 20 minutes to complete missions, and there's about 6-7 missions, you could be done with the game within a matter of a few hours. While there are skill levels, the only differences the skill levels bring is the general challenge of enemy fighters, there's no additional objectives. And there's cinematics that play after every level completed, but these do not play on the easiest (Sissy) skill level.
The default control scheme makes it really hard to manuever through spots without ramming into things, and this becomes troublesome in later levels. Since this game was released before the PlayStation controller had analog sticks, depending on the control scheme, you have to rely on either the control pad or the face buttons to move the helicopter around. It will also take you several minutes to control the helicopter well, and even then that becomes a problem. Thankfully there are several different control schemes to choose from, so pick one that suits you.
Black Dawn has a pretty simple group of sounds for helicopter blades whirling, sounds for firing missiles, explosions, they sound extremely common with no sense of variety. The music is on Redbook CD Audio (which means they play like tracks on a music CD), and it varies from heroic melodies to synthesized 90's tracks to music you'd hear in a film like Black Hawk Down. Some of them seem catchy, but you're not gonna completely pay attention to the music as you take down that enemy Hind helicopter. Some of the mission briefings are also on this same Redbook audio.
The graphics themselves are roughly first-second generation PlayStation quality, which worked at the time. Doesn't really hold up, but it doesn't detract from the gameplay or make it harder to play, everything seems to run fine.
Black Dawn gives the vibe of being like an arcade game, as it eschews realism for fun, the game isn't completely realistic. Enemies can go down quickly while it'll take you a boatload of hits before you eat dirt. In addition, destroyed vehicles will drop powerups like additional armor and fuel, and even a backup friendly vehicle. You also get score for every time you destroy something or complete objectives.
Once you complete levels successfully, you can put your score on a High Score list, which is good for bragging rights. However, Black Dawn is a single player game. No multiplayer or co-op or anything. It would've been very fun to complete objectives with a friend, and would've made the game more competitive.
When you look at it, Black Dawn looks like a game you'd probably see destined in arcades, not on a game console. While it has no multiplayer, pretty simplistic mission structure, and limited replayability, it's still a fun romp, and fun to put in and waste 5-10 minutes with. And it's especially good to see everything blow up.
Pros: Good music, pretty simple gameplay, seeing stuff blow up
Cons: Some of the control schemes are a bit convoluted, sound effects aren't anything interesting, no multiplayer, game is a bit too short.