Review: Sky Force Reloaded
Score:
78%
Version Reviewed: 1.07
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I approached this review with a touch of hesitation. After all, my love of the vertical arcade shooter genre is well documented here in a number of reviews, including the original Sky Force back on the N-Gage. The UIQ 3 version of Sky Force has a couple of problems, not least in that the W950 is going to mean the touch screen is used instead of the keyboard. Which might be a blessing or might not. Right then, what makes Sky Force Reloaded so much fun? Quite simply, it’s old school fun. You’ve got a threadbare plot that serves to simply get you into the game. Choose which style of fighter you prefer (slow and armoured, fast and vulnerable, or a well balanced compromise) and away you go. The Sky Force engine has been around for a while, and because of that the learning curve and difficulty of the game are perfectly pitched from moment one. It’s just very slightly harder than you want it to be – which in my opinion is perfect for a great game.
What is a bit more worrying is how you control your ship. Where the S60 versions of this application can use a navigator key/joystick, the UIQ owners, with their PDA-like touchscreen, will be using their stylus to fly around the screen. In a sense this makes for a much more accurate game – you can position your fighter exactly where you want it, fly through the hailstorm of bullets to get the power ups… and because your stylus can move a lot faster than your fighter you have a lovely bit of lag to contend with – which is very challenging.
Now I could put my blinkered view on and say that this change is a bad thing and makes the game poorer, but er.... it doesn’t, and so I won’t. It does make the game different though. And in a way that’s a good thing. Sky Force, by pitching itself as a strong and classic game, always had a high difficulty level. The use of the stylus does change the rhythm of the game. It’s slightly slower, slightly easier and thus more accessible. I just wish that the option for re-defining the keys actually let me use the keys so that I could compare the two experiences (i.e. stylus versus key control) on the same level.
All this aside, Sky Force Reloaded does not disappoint. It delivers just what it promises, with enough bells and whistles in the game mechanics to keep it fresh. It may be derivative, but that’s a good thing in games like this. The change to using a stylus may worry some people (and here the lack of a demo version means you have to trust the programmers... and also trust me, the recommender), but it’s certainly something I’m happy to have on my W950.
Ewan Spence, 28 Feb 2007
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at