Megacopter: Blades of the Goddess is a quality shoot 'em up throwback to Desert Strike

Inspired by the Strike series (Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike) and Choplifter, Megacopter: Blades of the Goddess is a lot of fun if you love fast-paced shoot 'em up action. Note: the developer sent a key.

As someone who grew up playing Desert Strike and later games, this one really spoke to me. Even if you don't have any nostalgia for the classics, it's still a well-made shoot 'em up full of twists and turns. Here you're not just flying any old helicopter, but the Megacopter, which appears to be somewhat alive and thirsty for blood.

Check out the trailer:

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Here you go through a series of missions with increasing difficulty, as it sprinkles in various different types of enemies where your focus ends up split between ground and air attacks to counter and dodge. It needs some pretty fancy finger-work on the controls at times too, it can be quite challenging not to get destroyed. Some missions are a straight-up fight, others see you being sent to rescue people. There's even defence missions with enemy waves coming at you and boss fights too — it has a bit of everything.

A bit of a learning curve to the controls too. In a few ways it reminds me of Brigador (also brilliant), with how you aim along a specific line that you move the crosshair inside. So you have to be aware of your position relative to the enemies, while they're firing at you, as you're also trying to line up your shots. It actually becomes pretty chaotic in the best possible way because you firing at both ground and air targets, with a separate button to target each. You'll spend a fair amount of time ducking and dodging in circles.

The story is a bit wild too, some crazy Reptoid people are trying to take over. Obviously it's your job to stop them. A job that perhaps they should have sent an army in for but they have you. Thankfully the Megacopter is powerful, with various different weapons and special ability combinations to unlock and pick your load-out for each mission. The story is just the right amount of ridiculous to make it feel not too far from an absured 80s action movie script. Great soundtrack to get the blood pumping too!

My only real issue is the graphical style. A bunch of it doesn't really fit together like the terrain and trees, when compared with the buildings and enemies all look a bit off and a bit out of place perhaps but once you get past that and sink some time into the game it really doesn't matter. Gameplay is king here, as they say and Megacopter is certainly a lot of fun.

It has full Native Linux and Steam Deck support. In fact, the developer mentioned earlier this month that nearly 20% of the sales for it at that point were from Linux / Steam Deck players.

Since release the developer has repeatedly improved all aspects of the game from player feedback too, including new ways to control the Megacopter and they continue to push out improvements even now.

Overall, it's a well-built shoot 'em up that you can't go wrong with.

You can buy it on Steam.