If your a fan of old school arcade style shooters then this post is in fact going to appeal to you. Today we will be reviewing two of my favorite Android Games from the market: Sky Force and Radiant. Both of these games would be classified as arcade style shooters but thats about the only thing they have in common.
For an arcade style shooter to be great, it must have a great control scheme because they rely on accuracy and agility to play. Many developers have been having problems porting shooters over to handheld devices in the past due to their controls but we will be focusing on two Android Arcade Shooters that seem to have gotten it right. These 2 games have found that the key to a great control scheme for a touch-screen shooter is to………”Keep it simple”. We don’t need 9 buttons for weapons and flight controls.
We will start off by looking at the game Sky Force. Sky Force is a standard top to bottom old school vertical shooter (blaster) which puts you in the pilot seat of 3 different aircrafts. The game was developed by iDreams and was released last year.
Graphics: The visuals of the game are a mix of 2d and 3d images. The main objects in the game appear in 2d but their are giant images such as light houses and boats which appear in 3d. We found the graphics to be a nice mix between the two, at first the 3d light houses may confuse you but once you realize whats going on it seems to enhance the feel of the game world.
Controls: The control scheme is what really stood out to us. The ship you control can be flown by holding and dragging your finger all over the screen. This method does have positives and negatives but we found more on the positive side. The first great thing about the controls is that the shooting is constantly going so you done have to worry about clicking any buttons to bring down your foes. While holding down your finger your ship will fly slightly in front of it so that it does not obstruct your vision, this works great for quick turns and avoiding missiles but we did find times where your finger may block projectiles coming from the rear of your plane. One area that we did not enjoy about the combat was the laser option, throughout the game you can acquire a laser upgrade which shoots a large beam at you opponents. We found the laser button is extremely difficult to press while in flight and it often lead to our pilots demise.
Music: The music was surprisingly amazing to hear. At first listen we thought it was just ok but then we strapped on the headphone and heard the music and sound effects for what they really were.
Game-play: Like most classic shooters the game has no story and its only objective is to kill everything that gets in your way (the way we like it old school). When the game starts you will have a choice to choose one of three helicopters each having different attributes. The two attributes that the crafts are working with are speed and sheilds and as you probably guess if you choose one you sacrifice the other. The first available craft has moderate speed and moderate shields and the other two are high in one spec and low in the other. The next step will be to choose your stage, this is a great feature because there is no need to save, each time you complete a level it will be opened to free play in the future.
One bad thing that we found was the lack of levels the game only has 8 level but there is 3 difficulty setting which makes the replay value fairly high. Once a level and a difficulty has been chosen you will are ready to go. As the game begins you are prompted with a message screen which tells you that besides beating the level you will also have to kill a certain number of enemies as well. This percentage feature is also a great feature for forcing you to try and beat your best score each time.
One of our favorite aspects with Sky Force was the weapons. Your ship will begin will a standard single tiered gun which fires one round every few second but with each kill you have a chance of earning weapon upgrades which make your guns heavier and quicker. There is nothing more fun then equipping a weapon that has lasted you 6 levels and is shooting fire bullets and heat seeking missiles. Most levels are built the same way that we were used to seeing in the past, you know fighting 1000 peons until we eventually reach the ultimate goal of the boss but there are a few unique levels where your gun is disabled and you are forced to bob and weave to an elaborate finish.
All in all we found Sky Force to be a great Android experience from start to finish. Sure there are moments where the game seems repetitive and stale but for the most part we found it to be one of Androids best time killers.
Price: £1.99 about $2.88 U.S.