I actually really liked this when I rented it, but I do remember the landscape being a bit dull, as you said. I didn't really mind the rock music or voices, though. I think I liked it more just cause it was cool to have a chopper game, as opposed to the airplane games I used to play, and I liked to blow crap up.
Chopper Attack
Though not a part of the Strike series, Chopper Attack appears to follow in its footsteps, providing a helicopter shooting experience from an overhead view. The base action is fairly solid, but suffers from a few poor design trappings and lack of variety. It's also on the brief side, making its merits short-lived.
After starting up the game, I hopped straight into the campaign. It was either that or the Free mode, which would turn out to be playing a level from the Campaign, except with no goals and you play until fuel runs out. Once there, I was greeted by an army general with briefing about the stage, which consists of nothing more than a few quick sentences of the goal and the simple reason behind the conflict (basically “They're the enemy, go kill them”). Just before the mission starts, he salutes, and offers one of two spoken phrases of encouragement: “Be a wild man!” or “You wanna party tonight?” Interestingly, some of the pilots you can choose are women, which makes the first one seem odd and could possibly give a new meaning to the second...
Before the mission starts, a weapon select screen appears. This is where cash is spent to load up on a few different special weapons, such as a missile that locks onto air targets, and one for ground targets, and a big bomb that explodes in a cluster. These weapons are actually not terribly useful; ones with homing capability don't do a very good job tracking a target, and many enemies have a “Dummy” they can deploy to get the missile off their tail. On the other hand, enemy missiles do the most damage to the player copter, which makes the Dummy the best thing to load up with. This makes the normal machine gun the best weapon to use to take out most foes.
Off to the stage, the goal here is simply to destroy all enemy units, which are pinpointed on the map display in the lower corner as red dots. The few enemy types in this and following stages include a couple different copters, a couple tanks, and a couple stationary gun emplacement. The copters, with their homing missiles, are the biggest threat, as most everything else just fires a feeble machine gun or unguided rocket. The key to success is usually to not get surrounded, as it's easy to dodge fire from one enemy but not from shots being fired from many directions.
There is a fuel gauge on the bottom of the screen, and if it runs out, the copter will crash; this is essentially the time limit for the mission. Fuel boxes may appear from destroyed buildings, along with other useful items such as a machine gun power up that will increase the number of bullets the machine gun fires at once, multiplying its power. Unfortunately, this adds a random variable to some stages, making them easier or harder depending on what appears. Destroying these buildings as well as enemies and other objects adds to the score, which after the mission is completed will be converted to money to be spent on weapons in the next mission.
The third stage offers a little variety, requiring protecting Air Force One by destroying every enemy before they shoot it out of the sky. This actually isn't as different as it might seem, as there is no real way to defend the large aircraft from being hit, essentially giving the stage a stricter time limit than the fuel usage. Worse yet, the aggressiveness of the enemies is completely random; sometimes they will barely fire machine gun shots at the President's plane, when others they will launch missile after missile in a frenzy. This makes it possible for the enemies to shoot down the plane before having enough time to dispatch them all. Furthermore, it's difficult to shoot down the enemies quickly enough if a machine gun powerup doesn't appear from one of the buildings near the start, leaving this mission up to random chance.
The rest of the missions involve destroying every enemy unit, or a specific group of enemy units, which is just about the same thing. This becomes especially tiresome in the apparent final stage, as the game's issues make themselves more noticeable than ever. The main problem here is that, given the large number of enemy units, it is virtually impossible to defeat them all without first running out of fuel. This means that I had no choice but to seek and destroy buildings, hoping for fuel boxes and essentially leaving success up to an RNG.
It is actually not the final stage however, as there is a secret stage unlocked if the game is completed on Expert. As there are seven missions in total, with only one of them that really offers something different from the rest, I figured it'd be easy enough to play through this game again just to see this eighth and final stage. I actually didn't notice a difference when playing on Expert, so I have no idea what the real changes are. My guess would be that enemies take more damage and cause more damage, but it isn't enough to b noticeable. The final stage takes place on the moon, and is a battle with UFOs that serve no connection to what little plot the game has. A new special weapon is offered to help take care of the forces, but once again, there are too many enemies to defeat before fuel runs out. After a few attempts to figure out the best strategy, I decided to not waste any more time with this mediocre game.
There is a nice selection of copters available, each with varying statistics, providing options for most types of play styles. As I would come to discover however, the choppers aren't exactly balanced. The ones with heavy armour plating are among the best, since they can take a lot of hits and having increased mobility doesn't help avoid damage as much as it should. The best chopper though, is the one with the double Vulcan, which starts out with one of the bullet powerups, basically doubling the fire power from the start. With no multiplayer modes, this isn't much of a factor.
The presentation is a mixed bag. The bland landscapes encompass stretched textures that can sometimes be an eyesore, and the thick fog limits the viewpoint. On the flip side, the aircrafts and ground vehicles are somewhat detailed, especially in comparison to the plain environments. The resulting explosions from destroyed objects leaves a little to be desired, with sparse fire and smoke particles. The music is usually generic rock, with decent sound quality and is unoffensive to listen to. The voices from the pilots are heavily compressed, and their exclamations such as “Okay” and “Ouch” sound so subdued as to be almost comical.
On the whole, Chopper Attack is a decent game marred with a few flaws and lack of content. Trying for high scores is the only reason to replay the campaign, though these scores are not saved, and a separate high score mode would have gone a long way towards replayability. Fans of these such action games may enjoy an evening with the game, but its lack of variety and modes gives no reason to return once the day is saved.
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