Choplifter!

Anyone whos near my age (47) and had an Apple II or a Commodore 64 (or a friend who had one) knows what Choplifter is. Its *this game* only of cours much more primitive. When I saw the price had been dropped to just a buck and that a similar buck sale was available for the iOS version, I picked up both of them. Theyre my first Mac App Store and iTunes App Store game purchases beyond free versions of things like chess and crossword puzzles.

I havent had much time to really muck around with them yet, but Choplifer 2 for Mac and iOS are pretty much identical, which one would expect when an iOS app is ported over to Mac OS X. Thats not a bad thing in this case, because the game is really fun. At least, it is for me, with my 30-year-old memories of Choplifter. Im sure players of World of Warcraft, Halo, Portal, or other modern games will not be impressed, but Ive found it quite good so far. For what its worth, I prefer the keyboard/mouse controls of the Mac version to the tilt-the-device controls of the iOS version.

The Mac version has crashed on me a few times. Its not a deal-breaker, especially for something I only paid a buck for. Even so, I hope the developer can address stability in future releases.

Id like to have multiple "player profiles" for the Mac version, since its much more likely that more than one person will play the game on a "real" computer than on an iOS device. This is especially important for a game like Chopper 2 which is a pretty standard video game where you play until you die and when you die you have to go back to the last save point. Id like to see developers think more carefully about differences between iOS and Mac platforms when porting their apps rather than just doing it as fast as possible.

Speaking of save points, for adults with business and family lives like me, it would be nice to be able to shut the game down at any point and pick up *exactly* where it was left off, rather than having to start from the last area save point. Sometimes I have just a few minutes to play (waiting for a phone call, for instance), and thats sometimes not enough to get from one save point to another.

Even with all the caveats, its a good game. If I were a gamer, Id consider it a fine value even at its normal price of about five bucks (I think the iOS version is normally three bucks).

JohnMHammer about Chopper 2