"Great gameplay and physics, bad graphics"

SimCopter is one of my favorite computer games. Note that I don't have very many computer games, but still, this game is good.

Gameplay 8/10 - Sim Copter is quite fun, especially once you get used to it. The career games start out easy and then get harder (like most games), so by the last level, you actually have to have incredible skill to beat the game. The basic play control (moving your copter) takes a while to get used to, but hey, piloting a real helicopter takes even longer to learn! Once you get used to it, you'll be flying like a pro. Of course, then there are all the other tools that are always hard to remember...is that C or is that V? Or is it B?...But don't worry, you don't use most of those very often.

Story 6/10 - What story?...Since there is no story, I'll describe a few of the missions: Fire - a building is on fire and you have to put it out with either a water bucket or a water cannon; MedEvac - Fly to the injured victim and return them to a hospital; Robbery - Dispatch police car to your location; Traffic Jam - Disperse traffic with your megaphone; Rescue - Use your harness to rescue a person from a rooftop, sinking boat, or train roof; Transport - fly to a location, pick up passengers, drop them off where they need to be; Riot - disperse rowdy citizens using megaphone, water cannon, teargas, and/or police. There may be a few that I left out. Each time you successfully complete a mission, you are awarded cash and points. You can use cash to buy bigger and faster copters.

Audio/Video 5/10 - The musical features (and hilarious ads and public service announcements) even out the score for this category. You can change radio stations to choose what style of music you want to listen to, including Classical, Rock, Techno, Jazz, and Mix. You can also make your own stations and use your own .wav files as music, which is really cool. The sound effects are pretty good, and the voices add realism. The graphics are this game's only downside. It seems they spent so long making the game engine and physics that they didn't have the memory/time/whatever to improve the graphics. You can make them look even worse by turning them off (the textures, at least). You can also make that annoying fog move even closer to improve the speed. Anyway, this game isn't really about graphics, and after playing it for a while, you'll get used to them.

Replayability 9/10 - Sure, it does get old after a long time, but what really adds to the replayability is the fact that you can create a city in SimCity 2000 (or even better: SCURK) and import it into SimCopter and fly around in it. That's my favorite feature.

To buy or to rent? NA - Well, you can't exactly rent computer games, but I'll just say that if you like the sim games, you'll definitely enjoy this game. If you're looking for a flight sim with incredible graphics, stay away.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/01, Updated 07/21/01