Apache Lander is a game with a very basic concept. You control a helicopter that needs to land safely on the pad below. Your controls are based on the accelerometer, with left and right moving your chopper side to side and tilting forward or backward changes your altitude. So how well does this simple game play? Not so great.

Apache Lander

First, the controls are horrible. Just the slightest tilt forward sends you flying up again. One of the best things about a helicopter is its ability to hover in one spot, however, trying to do this task is next to impossible. You also have a fuel limit, which runs out rather quickly as you continually get launched back up into the air. After around 10 minutes of frustrating gameplay I was finally able to land the chopper, and was given some sort of point ranking. I’m guessing that the amount of fuel left and completion time had something to do with this, but they don’t bother telling you.

I wish that the horrible controls were the worst part of this game. Unfortunately it seems that after you crash, the the bottom 10-15% of your screen is an invisible advertisement. Essentially, if you tap this area, Safari will open up and take you to the developer’s website. Since this is immediately where my thumb tends to go, I opened up more windows than I’d care to count. This game isn’t worth your time, so don’t even bother.