Alpha Wing 2

"Support our troops, the ones killing alien hoards."

Alpha Wing 2 offers a challenging and exciting spaceship fighting game for the mobile phone. The sequel improves upon the original with a fresh style with sleek graphics and sound. Alpha Wing 2 uses an overhead scrolling view instead of the profile side to side scrolling in the first title. The overhead view adds a 3-D feel as the background gets closer or further from the fighting ship. Combine the feel the game brings, with the vibrant and clear graphics, you have nearly all the pieces of a great game.

Alpha Wing 2 doesn't neglect much in just about every gaming aspect. They've created a plot, although simple and forgettable, where the Alpha Wing team must fight insurmountable odds and travel to numerous planets to stop the invading forces. The game offers three characters that seem to target a specific gaming audience: Summer, flying her pink Flamingo ship geared towards the female gamer. Robot-X, flying the Blue Shark full of fire-power and manliness for those testosterone raged gamers, and Tareq the alien, flying the Gecko, for those Sci-Fi nerds who wished they were an alien and the universe accepts them for who they are.

The game starts off on the home planet of Terra Prime. There are three planets and you must defeat them all to unlock the other two levels, Kraka and Traxgen. Once you've chosen your ship you are ready to save the universe. The game play is pretty simple, with auto-fire on, just shoot away at the hoards of attacking alien space ships. When you destroy an entire group of ships, a crystal will fly across the screen for added points. Along the way, there are spacecrafts that unlock power-ups that increase you fire power and add two hovering weapons magnetically in sync with your ship. Here lies the greatest dilemma with the game. As the levels increase, you won't make it through without a fully powered ship. The higher the level, the more chaotic the action. There are so many bullets and lasers fired on the screen, with some ships on kamikaze missions just flying right into you. They fire at you with blue and pink bullets which just happen to blend in with your ships own weapons and sometimes the ship itself, making it hard to recognize or notice.

What can you do to combat this almost impossible situation? Well they give you a shield to block you from all the weapons fired. The meter at the bottom of the screen tells when it will run out and when it refills. However, if you die three times, you can return to your last planet cleared but without the power ups needed to take out the aliens. You are better off starting from the beginning to get the power ups, because starting a higher level is a nightmare. You will just be shooting for the sake of shooting. Nothing will get destroyed except you.

When you are destroyed, your powers float around to screen to be recovered again. Basically you would have to beat the whole game through only dying twice, because I've never seen a free guy rewarded. Overall, this makes the game hard as hell, but still, there is enough to want to try.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/21/06