5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The kickass copter battle: Logan introducing a pilot to his bird’s rotor blades for the first time.
If there’s one thing wolverines love to do, other than contemplate suicide while being forced into photographs with crass cardboard advertising…
...it’s sending helicopter pilots straight to Beelzebub. We don’t exactly know why Wolvey’s blood pressure gets so riled up every time he sees a chopper. After all, it’s not like their bullets can cause much harm to his indestructible, regenerating ass. Yet every time he sees one, he throws himself at it claws first, like the poor chap inside had just finished double teaming Mrs. Wolverine with the aid of Sabretooth.
Above: Sadly, this is not an image of the aforementioned soul-scarring threesome
Everyone’s favourite Canadian mutant then proceeds to destroy his metal foe with nothing but the power of his admittedly several feet long, ludicrously deadly claws. Well, maybe the word ‘destroy’ is overegging Johnny Stabby Britches’ efforts just a little. He actually just breaks the windscreen.
Above: Take that, you glassy bastard
Turns out, though, helicopters won’t keep themselves in the air without the assistance of a human being. Which kinda makes this a problem…
Cynics will rightly claim each copter battle is just a glorified QTE. And well, they’d be right. An important life lesson Origin proves, though, is that even the most unoriginal game mechanic can be saved by letting you shish kebab a pilot with rapidly rotating metal blades.
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
The kickass copter battle: MacMillan and Price almost being killed by a crashed copter in All Ghillied Up.
It’s a little known fact, but helicopters are fiercely loyal and protective of their own. Send one of their ranks to that great airplane graveyard somewhere in the middle of a desert outside Las Venturas, and you can be sure a self-addressed envelope is making its way to you marked ‘agonising death’. This is a problem Captain MacMillan and a certain young John Price face when they take down a helicopter during an assassination mission in Chernobyl.
After setting up a blind date between their 50 cal. sniper rifle bullets and a Ukrainian chopper pilot’s face, the pair soon find themselves facing gunfire from a second whirlybird. Seemingly monumentally pissed about the felling of its airborne brethren, it not only fires at them, it even does its level best to kill them after it’s been shot down. Why not let the modern wonder of internet imagery demonstrate this death-defying scenario to you below?
One of the most thrilling, prolonged setpieces in COD 4, this is an example of Infinity Ward scripting at its very best. While there’s really no danger of Leftenant Price being minced by the oncoming copter, we defy you not to fill your pantaloons the first time you see its blades crashing towards you, as they chew through an abandoned playground.
And even though he gets his leg crushed by several tonnes of reinforced metal, MacMillan's wee flesh wound is nothing he can’t shake off. And soon he’s taking out a small army of terrorists with pin point accuracy without the little luxury of y’know, being able to move from the waist down. Yup, they sure do now how to breed production lines of near indestructible soldiers on the mean streets of Scotland.
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