Chopper Flies to the Rescue with Aplomb

Majic Jungle Software’s Chopper runs along the same vein as ngmoco’s Dropship where the object of the game is to pilot an aircraft over land, in a cave or in deep space to rescue stranded comrades while the bad guys blast away at you with all kinds of military-grade weaponry.

Chopper has good-looking graphics and it plays responsively as you navigate over obstacles. Control over your chopper, which is done entirely using the accelerometer, is intuitive and requires little effort. You kill bad guys with a machine gun and bombs using a finger tap.

I need to ask an arms dealer if helicopters drop bombs. I’ve always assumed they carry a rack of missiles and the “Puff the Magic Dragon” kind of Gatling guns you always see in movies. It’s no matter. It doesn’t detract from this game, which is flat-out fun.

Chopper features a variety of missions, ranging from rescuing civilians during a rain storm to rescuing  comrades on the battlefield. There are four difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard and pacifist. The first three are obvious. In the pacifist level, you fly missions without any weapons of your own while evading obstacles and enemy fire. Each difficulty level has 20 levels, so this game will keep you occupied for quite a while.

There are only a few options: volume leveling for the rotor’s SFX, adjusting hover angle and putting your control buttons at the top or bottom of the screen.

On my wish list, I’d put crisper graphics and the ability to launch missiles. Don’t get me wrong about the graphics. They’re quite good. However, they’re a bit two dimensional.

Chopper sells for $4.99, which is quite competitive given the overall quality of this game. I recommend it highly.