How to Bring Down V’s Helicopter in Katana Zero

V brings an attack helicopter to your final fight with him in Katana Zero. Here’s how to dodge his attacks and bring him down for good.

V is a violent, unpredictable criminal and your primary antagonist for the first half of Katana Zero. After capturing you during the Mansion level, he leaves his henchmen to deal with you. That doesn’t go quite how he planned, though, and you’ll catch up with V a short while later just outside. Both V and your character grab motorcycles for a high-speed pursuit along a scenic highway. Once you’ve dealt with V’s motorcycle-riding goons, you’ll catch back up to him. At this point, you can just rush him, using your time-slowing powers to avoid his shots if you need to and knock him off his bike.

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a boss fight if that were the end of it. V reappears moments later, having traded his motorcycle for a conveniently placed attack helicopter. Despite V’s obvious advantage when it comes to vehicles, this fight is actually pretty simple.

Avoiding missile attacks

The fight will start with V launching a missile barrage. Wait until you see the red targets appear on the highway, then simply move out of the way. For this attack, the missiles will always hit in orderly columns along the highway with safe spots between them. V always launches two waves of missiles, and dodging the first will put you in the path of the second. Once the first wave hits, just move forward the same distance you did to avoid them again, and you’ll be fine.

V has a second missile attack with a different pattern. This attack will actually track your movement, placing blue targets at your current position, with red targets showing up randomly across the highway. This pattern is much more difficult to dodge. You’ll have to keep moving to avoid the missiles from the blue targets while taking care not to end up on a red target when the missiles hit. It’s best to either make a big circle around the entire screen or in a snake pattern to avoid blue targets, making sure not to hit any red targets that come up.

It’s easy to tell which pattern is going to be launched. When the helicopter stays stationary in the middle of the screen while launching missiles, the attack will follow the first static pattern. When it swoops from one side of the screen to the other, it will use the tracking attack.

Dodging and deflecting gunfire

Between missile attacks, V will swing closer to attack with a machine gun and a pistol. When the helicopter hovers above the highway, but you can’t see V, it’s about to spray a line of machine gun fire across the road. The best way to avoid this is simply to get directly underneath the helicopter when it appears. If you can’t get there in time, get all the way to the top or bottom of the screen to draw the attack there, then switch sides when it starts firing. You can slow time if you need to, but keep in mind that you can’t dash on the motorcycle. It’s also possible to deflect these bullets back at the helicopter, but it’s much safer just to wait for the next phase.

After the machine gun attack, the helicopter will appear again, this time with V hanging from its side. This is your chance to attack. When he starts to fire, slow time and deflect a bullet back toward him, then you just have to repeat that whole sequence a couple more times, and V will come crashing back down to Earth.