RC Heli Lite

RC Heli is an RC simulator, but not. It's hard to say because you can't use your own radio system but yet it's still has the appeal of an RC flight simulator.

It starts off by giving you a brief instruction on what each control stick (left and right) do in the game. The first lesson is the controls for the left stick which is to control the main rotor for up and down. Then it goes on to tell you that the right stick controls the rotation and pitch. The final step before the actual tutorial begins is to describe how to move forward.

The first lesson of the actual hands-on (or should I say fingers-on) training is how to hover. Hovering is followed by learning pitch and rotation and you begin to fly the heli and manuver it to grab a green coin floating in the middle of the room. The final lesson involves flying back with the green coin and safely landing your heli on the heli pad. When you land on the heli pad it not only recharges your battery it also repairs all the damages occurred in flight.

Free Flight This is where you take what you have learned in the tutorial section and practice getting the flying skills down without the pressure of a time limit hanging over your head. This allows you to make it easier to complete the task in race mode.

Race The object of race mode is to collect all the gold coins as fast as you can. Then collect the red coin which is the finish line. This is a timed event. Don't worry there will be a little yellow arrow at the bottom of the screen pointing you in the direction of the next coin. After you successfully complete each race you unlock another track and another part of the house will also be available.

Graphics and Realism
The graphics are pretty good for being on an cell phone. The flying scenarios take place inside a house, starting in the living room. As far as feeling like flying a real RC, well that isn't too shabby either. Still, RC Heli could use a little more tweaking. Overall the realism is not bad for a freebie game.

Big Thumbs and Little Sticks
If you have big thumbs like me you might want to try and set your iPhone on the table area. If you do this you can then just use your index fingers like I did to move the virtual control sticks. You also have the option to use the iPhone's built in accelerometer to control the left and the right movements by tilting the iPhone left or right. But in my case since I'm not used to this kind of thing it made it more difficult to keep in a straight line.