With the industry’s seemingly never-ending desire to churn out games for a franchise until it drains every bit of life left in a series, it seems strange that we had to wait so long for a new Choplifter game. Originally published for the Apple II in 1982, ports of Choplifter appeared as late as 1986 for the Sega Master System and NES. The series fell dormant for a period of time, despite periodic waves of nostalgia for early ’80s classics that have given us atrocious remakes of other once beloved games. It’s fitting then that inXile — the studio that brought The Bard’s Tale back from the dead — brings us Choplifter HDon XBLA, PSN, and PC.
The new game sticks closely to the original’s premise: fly a helicopter and rescue people while shooting stuff. Most missions will require you to rescue individuals trapped in warzones around the world, and the campaign does a nice job of changing up environments to keep things from becoming too familiar or boring. Some of the stranded will start the level injured, and you’ll have to rescue them within a time limit. Depending on which helicopter you fly, you’ll have to worry about killing passengers and innocents on the ground with reckless flying or taking too much enemy fire. Other missions task you with blowing up enemy targets or simply escaping the level alive.
