Choplifter HD

reboot 3x and it plays good on steamdeck.

It seems petty to downvote a game that's delisted and not even available for sale, but holy **** is this game unnecessarily unfair. Even on normal, the game expects perfection on every stage. Perfection, as it throws endlessly respawning RPG soldiers, entire walls of AA cannons, EMP snipers, multiple tanks, and swarms of jets... usually while you're trying to perform a pick up. Scoring is inconsistent, too. Sometimes you'll 5 star a stage on your first try, just flying through and not caring about combat. Other times, if you try that, you'll get maybe 2 stars. And you HAVE TO care about the amount of stars you're getting. More stars = better helicopters unlocked. If you're sticking with the worse helicopters, just trying to push through, you're making the game harder on yourself. It's like inXile tried to straddle the line between Choplifter's action roots and the modern expectation that missions will have objectives and checkpoints... which, by the way, this game *DOES NOT HAVE.* These stages are LONG, too. You will try and try and try and try to complete a particular objective only to blow it on the next one and start the mission all over again... again. If you want to finish a stage at ANY score, you have to do it in one perfect run. Did I mention this game relishes being brutally unfair? I've beaten all of the Dark Souls games. I love Demon's Souls. None of those games hold a candle to the level of masochism you need to enjoy this game. The last time I died before writing this, I had just completed two of the timed rescue pickups and was on my way to the third one. As I set my chopper down, barely scraping by the AA cannon and pair of jets, the game spawns a tank (it wasn't there before!) point blank. If I dust off, I get obliterated by the jets. If I stay on the ground, I'm going to get one-shot by a tank. I stayed on the ground... and the game spawned two more tanks before putting me out of my misery. No wonder this game's delisted. It's raw sadism in game form.