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MiniCopter: Adventure Flight Review for the Nintendo Wii

MiniCopter: Adventure Flight Review for the Nintendo Wii

If you are looking for inexpensive games, most gamers know by now that the Wii is one of the best places to look. Between the Virtual Console and a steady stream of budget titles, the Wii is a great system for gamers who have moths living in their wallets. The only major problem with this logic is that broke gamers still want great games, and the quality of these budget titles can vary quite a bit. Some have been excellent and well worth their meager asking price while others have been horrific messes that weren’t worth your playing time even if they had been free. MiniCopter: Adventure Flight falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

MiniCopter: Adventure Flight screenshot

MiniCopter is a game that will speak to anyone who ever wanted to fly a remote controlled (RC) helicopter around indoor obstacles without the high potential risk of seriously injuring pets, people, and the resell value of your home. You will start off the game with one very basic RC helicopter and can unlock several more by successfully completing missions. All these helicopters handle slightly differently depending on its build and stats, giving the player adequate choices to find a helicopter that suites their play style. No matter which you choose, you will be able to earn or purchase (via the game’s store) parts that can be used to upgrade almost any aspect of its performance. Once you’ve acquired and installed a few upgrades, you will begin to notice and appreciate the improvements that they award.

Each helicopter comes equipped with a cannon and a suction cup, both upgradeable, which serve as your only way to interact with your surroundings, besides crashing. You will need to use your cannon to shoot many targets as well as a minimal amount of objects that can be essentially turned off and on. These objects can range from a cupboard door to a television that will need to be shot to open and turn on, respectively. This gets incredibly repetitive and will often result in the player shooting everything possible just to see if it reacts when shot. Let me save you some time. Most objects don’t react; only the ones that clearly look like they could change position, have a bullseye on them, or typically open or turn on in real life will need to be shot. The same goes for the suction cup. If it is a piece of garbage, a mission objective, or if there is a giant hand pointing at it, then you will need to catch it with your suction cup.

MiniCopter: Adventure Flight screenshot

Since you basically only have two ways to interact with your surroundings and both of them are fairly obvious and uninteresting, that doesn’t leave much hope for the game’s environments. There are seven different environments to complete missions in, each one as static, dull, and lifeless as the last. Many of the game’s backdrops are indoors in such interesting (read sarcasm) places as a child’s bedroom or a doctor’s office, leaving tons of objects and hazards in your way with very little room to maneuver around them. This can make completing some fairly easy missions needlessly hard and frustrating. Fly too high, and you smack into a ceiling. Try to turn left, and bounce off of a chair or some other random object. Flying machines and enclosed areas just really don’t mix well.

This is made even more evident when struggling with MiniCopter’s controls. You are given three different options for controls: a sideways Wii-mote, a pointing Wii-mote, and the Classic controller. None of these control methods are ideal, but I found the sideways control option to function the best. This method has the 2 button controlling your lift, the 1 button allowing you to hover, and tilting the Wii-mote in any direction to steer. The tilting seemed fairly responsive, but I think most of that can be attributed to just how slowly this game moves. Flying across what seems like only a few feet will take much longer than expected, almost boring you to tears before you reach your destination. This will further anger you when you have to start making multiple trips to a helipad while trying to complete a mission.

MiniCopter: Adventure Flight screenshot

As an RC helicopter, you won’t have an unending battery supply. In fact, your batteries will die out quicker than a road trip with a half-charged PSP. Different helicopters will have differing amounts of battery life, but all will need to recharge often. This can be accomplished by landing on a helipad and staying grounded for anywhere between two to five seconds. There aren’t many things more annoying than having to stop what you are doing every fifty seconds to make a mad dash to the nearest helipad to avoid failing a mission. That is, except for having only one helipad in most levels.

MiniCopter: Adventure Flight screenshot

These lone helipads can be located so far away that you can’t even make it there to land after being warned of your low battery issue. While this doesn’t happen often since most of the environments are quite small, I did have this happen in the wide open Park level of the game. This is inexcusable. Honestly, why aren’t there more helipads if you are forced to constantly “refuel” while playing? Instead, you get to keep making trips from wherever you may be back to the helipad just to burn some of your energy getting back to where you were in the first place.

The missions in Adventure Flight are also very uninspired. You are given six missions in seven different environments, but they are all basically the same. Mission One of each location has you landing on multiple helipads, the only differences being in the amount of helipads and the background you are doing it in. The same goes with the rest of the game’s missions, such as finding coins and stars, shooting targets, picking up objects, and, of course, flying through rings. These objectives seem interesting at first, but after a few rinse and repeats, you find yourself questioning why you need to do these things over again. The best answer I can come up with is that you shouldn’t. There is also a multiplayer mode thrown in, but it is clearly an afterthought, having you flying through rings against another player (as opposed to flying through rings by yourself).

Just flying around in MiniCopter can be mildly amusing, but the limited missions and interactivity, stale environments, and frustrating recharging mechanic will inevitably leave you disappointed with your experience. For a budget title, the game does look decent and has a slightly higher production value than expected. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to save MiniCopter: Adventure Flight from being anything but another Wii budget title that doesn’t quite merit even its reduced price point. I can think of worse ways of spending thirty dollars, but anyone looking to make those dollars stretch should look elsewhere for a more engaging and valuable experience.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.7 Graphics
MiniCopter won’t win any beauty contests, but it is a decent looking for a budget title. 2.6 Control
None of the controls really succeed or fail in any particular aspect. The only major problem I had was how difficult it was to precisely control your altitude. 2.4 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The sound effects are fairly bland, but the music sounds like an amusing mix of a children’s show theme song and thumping club music. 2.4

Play Value
There are quite a few missions and even a multiplayer mode included. Unfortunately, you’ll still basically be doing the same three (flying, shooting, and carrying) uninteresting things again and again.

2.5 Overall Rating – Average
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Customizable Controls- Use the Wii Remote tilt or pointer controls or play with a classic controller!
  • Mission-Based Gameplay- Engage in 42 missions in 7 different environments, like a child’s bedroom, hospital room, and more!
  • Customize Your RC Helicopter- Outfit your helicopter with a variety of body kits and parts that can alter the performance of your heli and improve your scores in mission mode!.
  • Two-Player Split-Screen Mode- Battle against a friend in a race for the rings to see who’s the best helicopter pilot!
  • Become an Ace Pilot!- Hone your flying skills to receive the highest amount of points possible in every stage! Only the best will receive gold stars all-around!

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