(It's you and your bike versus a helicopter.  Can you handle the heat in Chopper vs Chopper?)

Punching your hog as fast as it’ll go, weaving and dodging incoming shells from above by a merciless pursuant attack helicopter doing its damndest to take you down.  

Navigating a fully-loaded ‘copter armed to the gills with firepower, trying to pinpoint, lock and strike on a wild biker down below before he gets to his destination home free.

Those are the two vantage points in the original The Lost and Damned Multiplayer mode, “Chopper vs Chopper” – a classic bit of cat and mouse gameplay, with an explosive twist.

In this installment of Game Tips, we present some inside tips to help you sharpen your skills and strategy to one-up the competition online.  Keep at it, you’ll need to be pretty elite to top the charts on the forthcoming Episodes from Liberty City leaderboards, appearing at Rockstar Social Club in tandem with the release of the game for Xbox 360 on October 29^th. 

(Keep your eyes on the road and your foot on the gas, it's the only way to survive.)

Strategy tips for: The Biker

• When riding the bike, try and stick to streets that have overhead train tracks.  These will obscure the helicopter's view of you and also provide excellent cover. 

• Make sure to use your pistol when helicopters try to ram you.  While the pistol may be weak, in some cases you may kill the helicopter pilot.  Killing the helicopter pilot causes him to respawn in a distant location. 

• If you fly off of your bike during a crash, don’t fret - just hit the "Y" button to respawn on your bike.  The respawn button is inevitably much quicker than trying to find where your bike wound up after you went airborne.

• Since the bike has the advantage in both cornering and speed, you should go as fast as you can while also taking extremely sharp turns.  Enough evasive action should keep the helicopter pilot guessing. 

• The helicopter’s ammo is of the explosive variety.  This means that it affects an area and not just individual targets, causing near misses to throw you from your bike or even cause chain explosions.  So be wary of driving down crowded streets or narrow, serve-prohibitive alleys that the chopper can fly over and still be in range.  

• Holding the B button while on the bike normally shows the cinematic camera.  However, holding the B button while the helicopter is in range will show the helicopter pilot’s view.  This can be used to get a sense of exactly where the helicopter is when it’s closing in for the kill, making it easier to perform an evasive maneuver. 

(A helicopter pilot rains down explosive shells on his fleeing biker target.)

Strategy tips for: The Helicopter Pilot

• If you are flying the helicopter, think about the using the environment to your advantage.  Take out a stationary target that may cause a traffic jam or chain explosion as a means of slowing your opponent down.

• When piloting the helicopter, you will not be able to see the biker’s checkpoints on the mini-map.  However, you can see them in the world when you are close enough to them.  Be patient if you can’t get a clean shot on a straightaway.  Fly high and try to spot the next checkpoint so that you can anticipate which route your opponent has to take.

• You are flying an indestructible helicopter - make sure to take advantage of it!  Don’t only use the helicopter mini-guns to try and take out your biker target - when all else fails, ram your helicopter into the bike.

• Since the helicopter has explosive ammo, you do not need to score a direct hit to affect the biker.  Try to get an explosive just close enough to knock the biker off and then go in for the kill.  

If you consider yourself an accomplished “Chopper vs Chopper” vet, give us a shout to let us know any strategy pointers we missed - and look for continuing game tips in the weeks ahead to the release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City.

Previously:

Rockstar Game Tips: Handling Your “Club Business” in Multiplayer (The Lost and Damned / Episodes from Liberty City)

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Are there tough missions in a particular Rockstar game that you’d like some hints or help with?  Let us know via comments here on the Rockstar Newswire, or send us an email and we’ll try and give you our best tips and strategies.