PocketFullOfApps

Old-school top-down shoot ‘em ups have been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, but never completed a game because of the sheer amount of difficulty it held up for me. And I can’t afford to have a stack of tokens to continue my game, my mother won’t buy me more than two tokens at a time. Hee-hee! Sky Force is an original title from Infinity Dreams that has the look and feel of those top-down classics.

If you’ve played this kind of games like 1942 for example, you are already familiar with the premise of such games, but for those who have no idea,you basically have a ship / plane that you control, avoiding enemy attacks from various forms – planes, tanks, copters, and turrets to name a few. You are in constant attack by these folks and you try not to be hit by their projectiles. You have to shoot them back, not only to score points, but to destroy the hell out of them.

You have the options to choose a ship out of the total of three. Each type varies from another with its movement speed and how tough its armor. After choosing your ship, it’s time to play the game’s 8 stages. I am not sure though that it’s good idea that the game requires you to complete a stage in a certain amount of percentage. For example, to be able to move up to a later stage, you have to complete the current one by 80%. Meaning you have to rescue most of the humans, destroy most of the enemies, and grab most of the stars, thus accumulating atleast 80%. My gripe there is even if you completed a hard stage alive, it won’t matter if you only earned 79%. I know it brings challenge to the game but it’s not the usual challenge i find in most top-down shooters. Personally, I don’t like it. I have tried stage 5 requiring me to have atleast 87%, but I can’t still get it. It’s okay to replay the stage because you keep on dying, but replaying a stage a dozen of times just because you can’t get to 87% (but beating the stage EVERYTIME ’til the end) really ruins the fun for me.

Sky Force is not an easy game (all shoot ‘em ups are freakin’ hard, FYI). but you can choose three difficulty levels, the Hardcore gamers would probably choose medium right away, or even on hard. But you really have an incentive playing all the difficulty levels including the easy one because this game uses an online leaderboards for each difficulty. And each difficulty has its own achievements. Although the three difficulties have the same goals to earn those achievements, it will really motivate you to play them all especially if you’re an achievement addict like me.

Again, the game overall is hard but I’d like to take note about bosses in this game. They provide you with enough challenge but they’re not really hard to beat because the projectiles are not scattered and does not have a pattern like most top-down shooters. The traditional memorization of the bullet patterns is absent here in the game so most likely you’ll breeze through the boss fights. I find it more hard playing through the level with lots of enemies appearing and all bullets coming in on you.

One more lacking aspect of the game is power-ups. You can pick-up upgrades for your default gun weapon making them dal more damage than usual, you’ll eventually be picking up a limited laser weapon and a homing missiles weapon upgrade, and that’s it.

The graphics are in 2D but there were some small usage of 3D graphics on towers. The 2D sprites aren’t crisp enough, they’re mediocre and nothing special but the sountrack keeps things frantic.

Sky Force isn’t the best top-down shoot ‘em ups game out there, but is one of the better ones on the Appstore right now. With Openfeint integration, you’ll have more replay value for its price. You’re gonna like this if you’re a fan of this type of games but won’t blow you away. Overall, it’s still recommended.

3.5 out of 5
Good

Sky Force on the App Store.

Tags: $1.99, Review, Sky Force, Sky Force Review