While playing the highly enjoyable Chopper 2, developed by Majic Jungle, I could not stop exclaiming the highly memorable Schwarzenegger quote from Predator: “Get to the chopper!” My Austrian accent needs some work.
Although this Chopper sequel, which is on sale for a limited time for $2.99 and will be $4.99 thereafter, has nothing to do with aliens hunting down humans in the jungle, its rescue mission aesthetic delivers an intense gaming experience. Just like in its predecessor, you must get the helicopter from start to finish, rescuing civilians along the way while avoiding obstacles, such as flocks of birds, trees, armed assailants and many others. You gain weapon upgrades based on your performance. There are 36 missions in total over 12 different environments.
Chopper 2’s superb 3D graphics ups the ante for the side-scrolling genre, taking advantage of the iPhone 4’s improved pixel resolution. Aside from the iPhone 4, this game works on all of Apple’s mobile devices, adjusting to fit the device’s visual capabilities. Also with the improved graphics is a two-and-a-half dimensional visual component that adds the illusion of spacial depth to each level.
The default tilt control scheme, for which you can invert the Y axis in the Options menu, mimics actual helicopter controls. Tilt down to lift off, up to land, and left or right to move forward or retreat. You can toggle between tilt and touch controls as well.
By selecting the “Remote Control” option you can tether your iPhone to a larger device like the iPad via Bluetooth or WiFi. Connecting enables the phone to serve as a remote control. This feature worked extremely well when I tested it on my iPad. Other developers have incorporated tethering to increase the ‘cool factor.’ The free Scrabble Tile Rack app transforms your iPhone into a rack, allowing players of Scrabble for iPad to use the device as a gameboard instead of being forced to “play-and-pass” with your opponent.
Tethering compliments Chopper 2 in that tilting the iPhone back-and-forth takes away from the gameplay. Using the iPad as the main screen improves engagement and overall enjoyability.
And of course, you can enable OpenFeint when playing and add your names to ranks of the online leaderboards.
In all honesty, you would be hard-pressed to find a better helicopter-themed game that executes well on all of Apple’s mobile devices.
