Chopper Review

In an effort to cover all things iPhone, iPhonePOV inc., has purchased a new building in Boulder, Colorado which will serve as our review headquarters. This facility will be staffed by dozens of iPhonePOVers who will play all the latest games and fret out the good ones so you don't have to waste your time playing the bad ones.

Which brings us to our first review: Chopper

In a word, this game rocks. It's everything the classic game Choplifter was (if you owned a computer before 1995, you've played Choplifter) and so much more.

Gameplay is simple. You fly a helicopter (using a very well-calibrated tilt system) across various terrains and shoot bad guys while occasionally landing to pick up the good guys. When you've got all the good guys, you have to fly back to your home base and drop them off.

The first four or five levels are very easy and provide a good grasp of the game's mechanics. When you get to the higher levels, the game becomes much harder, which is when the fun really starts. Killing bad guys can be accomplished with bombs or an on board machine gun (both of which never run out of bullets) and flying is so well calibrated that you can hold the phone in a normal viewing position (unlike Monkey Ball) the entire time you're playing. Chopper also features a six slot save system that is fast, easy to use, and mandatory if you want to get past level 10. Although it can be a frustrating game, it's the good kind of frustrating, the kind that keeps you playing until you get the dreaded 10% battery warning.

At $7.99 it's a little more expensive than some games, but it is vastly better than 99% of the $10 games listed at the iTunes Store, so you get your money's worth.

Here's the overall rating (out of six triangles--because the five star systems are so 2007)

Gamplay: ∆∆∆∆∆
Stability: ∆∆∆∆
Graphics: ∆∆∆∆
Sound: ∆∆∆
Controls: ∆∆∆∆∆
Value: ∆∆∆∆

It's a good one. Highly recommended.