HeliHopper review - A different kind of bird pinger

At first glance HeliHopper seems like a pretty odd premise, but it's actually rooted in the smartphone classics.

The idea is to hop a helicopter from one skyscraper to another in a single clumsy arc, like some kind of daredevil city hospital pilot.

In order to execute this unorthodox move you need draw out an appropriate launch angle and release to ping your chopper into the air. It's a mechanic that shares quite a lot in common with Angry Birds.

Angle birds

While Angry Birds makes its drag-and-release aiming system the one dependable constant of the game, however, HeliHopper turns it into a guessing game.

There's no aim guide here, so you're required to quickly get a feel for the game's physics in order to judge by eye. You can opt to activate an aim guide for the next move, but these are in seriously limited supply.

With the buildings constantly shifting height and a pretty small platform area to aim for, HeliHopper is actually quite a tricky proposition.

It provides a somewhat unwieldy side-hop system for last minute adjustments, but nailing your landing is a real skill.

Get to the chopper

As it sounds, though, HeliHopper is also a very repetitive game. The developer seems to realise this, and bombards you with a series of flashy distractions to try and mitigate the onset of overfamiliarity.

Chief among these is an incredibly busy mission system, which is constantly setting you new mini-goals to reach - land four in a row, for example, or execute two hops without using any side hop adjustments.

You can also acquire new helicopters with different handling characteristics, but it's impossible to hide how stark a proposition the game is.

HeliHopper is a pleasantly tactile casual game that rests entirely on its central pinging mechanic. While it's solid and tactile enough, however, the game's delights are simply too sparse and repetitive to achieve full lift off.