Aegis Wing

"Boring single player, fun multiplayer"

While some game companies may try to convince you that all video games that are released today need ultra realistic graphics in battlefields with hundreds and thousands of enemies at once, it's not always the case. Indeed, as long as a game is fun, that's all that matters right? The latter of these beliefs has come into more focus recently, as games like Geometry Wars, Tempest, and now Aegis Wing become smattering collisions between the past and the present.

While Aegis Wing may present itself as a simple side scrolling shooter, it's much more than that. While other side scrollers would probably feature the same repeating textures over and over, Aegis Wing presents unique, three dimensional backgrounds which are always changing depending on how far in the level you are. An example of this would be a level near a space station, where in the beginning, you're shooting down enemies from a comfortable distance away from the station. By the end however, you've penetrated the station through a hole, and must travel throughout the entire thing for an epic boss battle in the core.

Not like I'm spoiling anything though. The story of Aegis Wing is near non-existent, if that. Indeed, the only way to enlighten yourself on any semblance of the story is to read a small text box near the bottom of the screen before each level. It almost seems like somebody tried to combine the terrible stories of today's games with the text based adventures of the past.

Once you get past that though, you're blasting away enemy ships and dodging mines in space and having a blast. You can get several pickups from your enemies like you could in any other scrolling game. However, instead of becoming a hulking beast of death and destruction after a few pickups like in a normal scroller. Upgrades run out after only four uses, and you can't stack them. While most games of this genre would have you spewing seven lasers four seeker missiles and three lasers, Aegis Wing only lets you use one upgrade at a time. This approach adds a whole new layer of strategy in that you can't stack up a war machine a death that can clear the screen in a single shot. Instead, you'll be sneaking around, taking pop shots and conserving ammo.

If there's one thing that the Resident Evil games have taught us, conserving ammo isn't fun, and it's very hard to pull off right. Aegis Wing doesn't. The fact that the majority of enemies will not even be engaged by your ship because it's so much easier to find a comfortable lane and just sit there is proof that this game doesn't pull it off. The game quickly turns into the Splinter Cell of side scrollers, and that's not a good thing. In fact, the only time you will be firing a lot of shots at once will be at the end of each level, for a comfy boss battle. The boss battles are quite simple, generic, and not very original. Other than one battle where the enemy lost pieces of it's body at certain points, the bosses looked pretty much exactly the same.

But to stop the ever-flowing river of boring, those interns that graced us with the game have added a co-op feature. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds. It's not just flying around the screen with three other people like most co-op games. You can attach yourself to a friend's ship (It's not as hot as it sounds). Afterwards, you're turned into a turret with advanced firepower, while your friend is a slower moving normal ship. You can create epic combinations with up to four people, although you'll be sacrificing a lot of speed and making your cluster just one huge target. It's a trade off sure to lead to plenty of shenanigans, and lots of fun.

The multiplayer alone salvages this game from being just another simple, low depth, Xbox Live Arcade game. Aegis Wing is possibly some of the most simple fun you'll get out of online play, even if the single player is really boring. However, if you ever think that the battles aren't intense enough for you, try Insane difficulty.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/07