I had my hopes up when I saw this title for a bargain. It gave me a flashback of old classic top-down scrollers that I used to play with my friends as a kid. And this game seemed to have 3D graphics instead of bitmaps -- which in some cases does work out.

With anticipation rising I launched the game, checked the controls and started my flight. The pad controls felt suitable and the chopper felt to respond rather well. First target in sight! Fire! ... "Die, you terrorist dog!" ... WTF? Okay, so the ammo automatically hits the target if you are remotely aiming towards it, I can live with that. And I could even live with below mediocre level design and cloggy textures and below average sound effects. But I cannot tolerate those darn pilot comments every time a target is taken out or you are getting hit! Sure, there's a variety in those but that's pretty much all you hear along side with poorly suiting sound track.

Four training missions was enough for me. There are better games to spend your time with than this. There is a 2 player co-op but I rather have a friend join me for a game of Rayman than Heli Heroes. There's nothing heroic in this game.

Hope you love entering registration codes, because that's what you'll do over and over and over and over... Obviously, this slumlord publisher doesn't even believe it when you enter the registration code you get when you bought the game!

I wanted to like this game, I really did, but this piece of "Topware garbage" (ok, that's redundant) just won't let me! My first and biggest red flag should have been it was from Topware, a company which should change its name to something more appropriate, like "Crapware", "Shovelware", or "Nagware".

Once the game started (after the DX installs), the first thing I was presented with was the serial code registration screen. Upon entering the serial code, I promptly went to the "Options" area to check / change whatever, and upon backing out to what should have been the main screen, I was once again presented with the registration screen. Upon entering the code AGAIN, I then exited the game, thinking that perhaps shutting it down would save the registration code...

HOW WRONG I WAS!

After starting the game back up, I was finally greeted with a proper title screen & menu. I decided to begin the tutorial in order to find out the specifics of this game which I thought would be a nice homage to the scrolling shooters of old (Choplifter, Raiden, Sky Soldiers, Dodonpachi, etc...). Once the mission started, I was instructed to move from A to B and shoot targets for extra points. This is when I found out the only thing on my XBOX 360 wired controller the game recognized was my joystick, so I spent the entirety of the mission moving around on-screen, collecting power-ups / ammo, targeting things, and not able to shoot them. Once I "completed" the first tutorial mission, I decided to exit back to the title screen so I could check my control configuration...

AND ONCE AGAIN GOT THE REGISTRATION CODE ENTRY SCREEN!

It is at this point I gave up and rejoice that I only spent a buck or so on this lesson in terrible coding and Topware "quality".

Don't buy this. Just... don't. Get MAME instead.

Meh pretty weak shooter imo.