Sky Force Reloaded

Loading up Sky Force, I really had no idea what to expect. Okay, to be fair I had a pretty good guess the game would be a vertical shooter, the genre is exploding on the iPhone right now and the name does rather scream “Hey, let’s go fly around and shoot things!!” But beyond that, I really did load up the game blind.

So when I saw the oil rigs and helicopters silhouetted in flame on the loading screen, I thought this would be something along the lines of 1942 set in the Iraq war.

And then they asked me to select my ultra-futuristic starfighter.

The gameplay is rather standard bullet-dodging fare, your ship follows your finger with a slight to severe lag based on its speed rating and automatically lays down a steady stream of fire in front of you. The on-screen controls are spare, consisting of nothing more than the button to fire your super-powerful laser and a button to quit, both tucked neatly into a bar at the bottom which, thankfully, doesn’t interfere with ship control.

A small life counter and shield gauge take up the top left of the screen, the laser gauge and enemy killed percentage take up the top right, the score rests in the middle, and the rest of the screen is left open for the carnage, making for a very clean interface and huge playfield.

There are some minor upgrades which drop from the hordes of enemies coming to eat your brains or whatever it is the enemies do when they finally destroy your ship. These upgrades appear as visually distinct floating pickups and do one of four things: recharge your shields, upgrade your bullets’ size and spread, charge your laser, or add and upgrade your homing missiles. The biggest gameplay innovation, however, is the replacement of the screen clearing bomb with the precision destruction of the laser.

It’s a nice little touch that adds a little more strategy to the game.
Scoring is done through a combination of enemies killed, percentage killed, and pickup of the floating stars every enemy leaves behind. There are even some hapless humans standing around that reward you with a rousing “Yeehaw!” and a nice little point bonus when rescued.

As I said, the vertical shooter genre is very popular on the iPhone, so standing apart from the crowd is important. Sky Force does this in a few ways, the first being the laser previously mentioned, but another is the ability to choose your ship. While not a new concept, it’s one not explored often enough, and can make for some interesting gameplay choices when done right. I say when done right for one very big reason, and that is Sky Force, unfortunately, did not do it right.

You are presented with three options, a slow craft with good shields, an average ship, and a speed demon with poor shields. Unfortunately what they don’t tell you is that the slow ship responds so slowly that it lags well behind your finger, causing you to hide valuable screen space as you try to dodge the steady stream of fire. They also don’t tell you that the “good” shields only absorb one or two more hits than the poor shields of the speed demon. Add that the fast ship sticks to your finger like glue and you’ll quickly end up dismissing the other two every time.

Before you pick your craft, however, you’ll find three difficulty settings, easy, medium, and hard. The game states that the enemies are more aggressive on the harder difficulty settings, but the far more noticeable difference is the percentage required to advance. This is another difference between Sky Force and other shooters, instead of just getting through a level alive, you have to kill a certain percentage of enemies to move on and unlock the next stage.

It makes for an interesting twist on the level design, making the “trash” enemies just as dangerous flying away as flying in.

As would be expected, each of the graphically impressive stages ends with a music change and a rather graphically impressive boss. The boss fights are well designed in most respects, you have to dodge and disable each of the boss’ weapons until he is left defenseless. My only minor complaint is that you still have to pump a handful of bullets into the defenseless boss, as it takes a bit away from the feeling of victory.

Music and graphics are very good, the stages and the enemies are sharp and your craft looks so good you’ll be glad it stays slightly ahead of your finger. The heavy electronic music is a great fit for the game, and is just generic enough to add without detracting. The sound effects are a little too muted, however, even on the loudest setting you could only barely hear the pops of the smaller craft while the larger enemies give you what would be a satisfying boom with only a few more decibels.

The game itself is fairly glitch free, though there was one minor bug I found with the music. If you set the iPhone down between levels and let it lock, on unlocking the sound will be disabled until you bring up the exit game menu. Not a big deal, but if you play in bursts like I do, it can crop up multiple times in a session. A quick search of the developer’s site did not show any others reporting the error, though, so it may just be a faulty installation on my version.

Overall, the game is a treat to play. Each of the stages is just long enough for a quick pick up and run and the music blends into the background without being either too bland or too distracting. There’s no one thing I can point to that says buy this game today, but taken all together it’s a solid offering in a crowded genre.

Positives
Gorgeous graphics
Stages perfect length for pick up and play sessions
All-around well designed vertical shooter

Negatives
Ship shield differences too minor while speed differences too major
Sound effects low on the oomph factor
Bosses must be disabled then killed, feels unnecessary

If you enjoyed reading this article or review thank us by submitting it to these services below.

Related posts:

1. Review: Doodle Sky Pro – Is This Doodle Flight Control Clone Worth a Buck?
2. Sky Burger
3. Venger Review

Tags: iPhone, itouch, scroller, Shooter, Space Shooter

Category: Games