PocketGamer.org: Chopper Alley

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Chopper Alley

.: By: Jason Surguine :: Device used: E-125 :: May 2, 2001 :: Buy this game :.

Chopper Alley is one of the more talked about games in Pocket PC gaming history. It is also one of the games to receive the most hype in PPC history. In addition, the game had one of the worst launches in history. If you remember, this game launched incomplete and full of bugs. It was missing all the missions, which are pretty important to the game, and missing the use of any weapons. Basically, all you could do was fly around and look at the pretty landscapes, on the iPAQ. There were several pre-reviews (e.g. at PocketNow) about the game running smoothly on the iPAQ, and how it looked really nice, but it was pretty much useless because there was no gameplay.

Then, the game finally re-launched with all of the missions and weapons you could use, including the implementation of vertical interlacing which improved/improves graphical performance, something definitely needed if this game was to run on a Cassiopeia. The game was plagued by confusing missions, poor control, the ridiculous task of having to search for fuel tanks every two minutes, and super slow performance on the Casio (to be anywhere near playable, the settings had to be set to very low or low for draw distance and image quality, and that is with the interlacing already on), which spawned the nickname by Casio users 'Choppy Alley', in reference to the frame rate. This version was reviewed on an iPAQ (luckily) which mentioned these problems and pretty much said the game was somewhere between sub-par and okay.

Now the game has been updated yet again with the fuel tanks taken out (with the ability to add an extra tank to your items), revised and added missions, SH3 support, the implementation of dual interlacing (horizontal and vertical), as well as some other minor improvements; like an explanation of how to get off the ground at the beginning of a mission. Also, even more recently a Mission Pack has been added to the game, which has several missions using trains. So, does the latest revision of Chopper Alley redeem itself and fix all of it’s shortcomings? Or is it still as much fun as having dental surgery?

First of all, any Casio users who haven’t looked at the game since it’s initial release, should really take a second look at the game. The double interlacing greatly increases the frame rates, and after toying with the settings for a while, you can find the game much more playable, and not too shabby looking either. As for Jornada users, I have no idea how it runs, but I imagine that the game runs similar to how the old version ran on the Casio. If that is the case, you may want to avoid it like the plague. If that’s not the case, then please write in and submit your own review. iPAQ users, you know it runs fine. So the performance has been improved, that’s a plus.

As far as graphics are concerned, these are pretty nice voxel landscapes (such as the ones used in the old 486 Comanche game) with 3D models used for buildings, choppers, tanks, people etc. These are very nicely done and look gorgeous on an iPAQ at very high image quality and very far draw distance.

However, on the Casio or Jornada, you will most likely have to set your draw distance to far (otherwise you can’t see anything) and your image quality to low (or somewhere thereabouts; I’m not going to dictate what you should use exactly, I’m just stating the optimal setup for me) for the best compromise of speed and playability.

With the image quality set to anything less than very high, the voxels start to look really bad. This is especially true in stages with the mountain scenery which uses many of the same colors, making it hard to distinguish any kind of detail at all. So while the graphical accomplishment of using a 3D voxel environment on the PPC is cool; when playing it on any other device than the iPAQ, it pales in comparison with the crisp performance and graphics of the true polygonal 3D titles such as Racing Days.

Another gripe on graphics. While the menus in the game are very nicely done and very professional looking, they take way too long to load. I’m not talking about the title screen to the mission select screen (although that is slow too; they all are). My main gripe is with selecting the missions or weapons, especially the weapons. Sometimes it takes me 2 minutes to arm my chopper with the weapons I want, just because I’m waiting for the pretty, 3D rendered model of a rocket to appear. I don’t know if the entire screen is redrawing itself, but it sure does seem like it. I would be content with just a list of the weapons available on the left hand side of the screen and the weapons I have equipped on the right, in text boxes. If I want to see a pretty picture of the weapon I’ll tap on a detail button or something.

The sound is this game is on par with most puzzle games out there. In other words, it's bad. There is a total of about 6 sound effects which amounts to the machine gun firing, firing a rocket, an explosion (or crashing), the sound of the chopper, a little clicking noise when the game starts, and the annoying beeping sounds when your altitude/fuel is too low (which never shuts off until you remedy it). Not that these sound effects are all that bad, they’re just not all that good. And those beeping sounds are just too annoying to listen to, ridiculous if you’re flying low and trying to target an enemy or pick up an ally. Luckily, there is an option to mute the sound.

What is really disappointing is the lack of music in this game. I’m not going to say ‘the hardware limitations’ or anything like that because it’s processing so much. Those excuses are old, especially when looking at games like Turjah 2, Metalion, and Racing Days. All of those have great graphics while playing music at the same time. I was looking forward to something at least like ‘The Danger Zone’ music in Top Gun for the NES.

Two things that really plague this game are the play control and the missions. The play control is basically stylus based, aimed at the iPAQ. This isn’t a bad thing; I’ve actually heard that it overcomes the control limitations to the best of it’s ability. However, the Casio has buttons and a D-pad. And these are implemented so poorly, I only use one button (which makes the control no different from the iPAQ). I would love to use the D-pad to move up or down, not speed up or slow down. It would be nice to have the option to assign the buttons or D-pad to whatever function I want it to do.

While the accelerating/decelerating has been implemented on-screen pretty well, the relative altitude system is not a good/necessary implementation. It would actually make much more sense (from a gaming point of view) to just have the entire altitude system based on the y-axis of the 3D environment. In other words, if I want to raise my altitude to 300ft then I push the button or tap the screen to go to 300ft. And if I want to go down to 10ft above a mountain, then I carefully watch the mountain and elevation radar and change my elevation to 260ft above the sea level/starting point (y=0) where I know that the mountain is 250ft from the radar information. I’m pretty sure that most people with a PPC can do this kind of math in their head.

Speaking of radars, how come the enemy gets to have one and I don’t? Sure I have these magical ‘radar guided’ missiles, but I have no idea where to find who I’m supposed to be shooting at. And the overhead map doesn’t help one bit. What would be nice is if the overhead map had little blinking icons of where the Enemy Chopper is that I’m supposed to be hunting down. An onscreen, transparent map would be nice as well, all I want is a simple radar with blinking green (red, or any color, I doesn’t matter) icons so I can find what I’m supposed to be shooting, or who is shooting at me. The game does however implement a worthless onscreen console which tells you everything that is happening in the game, for example:

Warning: Tracked by Radar

Warning: Incoming Rocket

Incoming Rocket Missed

Incoming Rocket Missed

Incoming Rocket Missed

Incoming Rocket Missed

HIT BY ROCKET!!!

HIT BY ROCKET!!!

No longer tracked by radar

With all of this clutter on the screen (which you cannot turn off) it’s pretty hard to concentrate on targeting the enemy who is - Warning: Incoming Rocket Warning: Incoming Rocket Warning: Incoming Rocket Warning: Incoming Rocket Incoming Rocket Missed Incoming Rocket Missed Incoming Rocket Missed Incoming Rocket Missed - shooting at you. It seems to me that the words on the console are more harmful to me than the rockets.

Despite all of these shortcomings, the gameplay can actually be quite fun. That is, once you understand them. Some of the missions are pretty easy and take about 1-5 minutes to finish, while others are moderately difficult to accomplish if you spend a good 15-20 minutes on them.

This 15-20 minutes is not spent trying to accomplish the mission, but rather trying to figure out what the heck you’re supposed to do. This is due to uninformative (and usually wrong) mission descriptions. For example: "There is another airfield in our close proximity. Take our enemy choppers you can find there". Once you figure out that "our" was a typo and meant that you have to take out the enemy choppers, it's pretty simple.

Better yet: "Hint: Without support from a mobile radar unit, they have to revert to manual aiming". Okay, so this means that there are no mobile radar units and I don’t have to worry about "Tracked by Radar" messages. Or does it mean there are mobile radar units, but I should stay away from them while I’m around choppers? No problem, I’ll just use my radar to stay clear of the mobile units. Oh yeah, I don’t have a radar.

Another problem already mentioned is that you must literally find all of the enemies by roaming around the stage, due to the lack of a radar, which can take quite a while. This is not because the stages are so big, but because they are intricately laid out with many mountains and valleys on some stages. I will say that the map design actually does deserve some good credit due to this.

These two elements make the gameplay a strange mix of an action/arcade shooter and a flight sim/adventure. Yet, there isn't enough action for it to be an arcade type game and the simulation of the flight isn’t exactly realistic, and you have to explore around quite a bit before you find your next target.

I’m still confused between the choices of choppers. The only difference I could find in each one was that one holds more stuff/weight/people than others. But none of those differences affect the speed or fuel consumption, which makes some of the choppers completely useless.

The choice of weapons/fuel actually does work nicely, and I don’t mind it except for the fact that it takes 3 minutes to browse through the weapons and choose what I like. However, now that the Fuel Drop Tanks have been added, it appears that the floating fuel tanks have been taken out of the missions. This means that if you’re low on fuel, you better hurry up or you’re screwed. I actually like this more than having the floating fuel pickup every two minutes. This means that you have to balance the weapons and the fuel that you carry, while putting a time limit on the mission.

As for the new mission pack, it is exactly as it says. It adds a new map with a few more missions to the game. These missions are fun, nothing extremely entertaining over the original ones, but it’s nice to have more. Any of the missions aren’t really fun until you get the hang of the game.

Once you figure out what to do, learn the wacky control system, see through the cluttered console, learn to memorize the maps and enemy patterns, and turn off the sound, this game can be a lot of fun. Once I mastered the poor control and got the hang of the missions, I had a blast shooting off rockets and machine guns and blowing stuff up in a 3D world on my PPC. I also got a lot of satisfaction when I finally beat a mission I had been spending 30 minutes on. The semi-nostalgia of Comanche is a plus too.

Chopper Alley is by no means a wonderful, blockbuster, ground-breaking, amazing game. However, it is not a bad, poorly written, barely-playable, 'Choppy Alley' either. I’d say, try out the demo first (at least they have a real demo, unlike some other companies that start with an M) and, if you get used to it, beat it, like it and want more, then buy it. If not, just use the demo to show off the capabilities of your PPC to your friends.

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