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- Rating:
- Price: $9.99 (Get It)
- Version: 1.0
- Developer: Rocking Pocket Games
Blue Skies Air Force Academy is a 2D top-down helicopter shooter that pays homage to the 80’s and 90’s games of yesteryear. One such game that comes to mind is Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, a classic, and a game I played religiously on the Sega Genesis. You can imagine my excitement when I first saw Blue Skies in action, bringing back fond memories.
The main menu, which shows helicopters flying up and out of view, offers two choices, New Game and Options. When starting a new game, you can choose from four characters - two boys, and two girls. Although the choice I chose was changed by the game, for some reason. If you had started a game, it’ll instead say Continue so you can return to where you previously were. When you leave the game via the Home button during the course of playing, when you return it remembers how many enemies you have left. The Options screen let you adjust the volume of sound and music. There’s the ability to calibrate the device so you can play the game at any orientation. There’s also a screenshot showing what all the different UI elements mean.
The object of the game is to defeat the evil Hans, and preventing him from invading your homeland. You’ll be fighting blimps, planes, helicopters, tanks, and mines, while progressing the story by chapters. Each chapter, you’re presented with a cutscene showing characters that talk much like you would hear in The Sims (Simlish) but in a unique way. It works well, and while the story is a bit hokey, it fits in with the theme of the game (retro game throwback homage.)
During the game, you have to watch your health (represented by the red bar on the left side of the screen), and your fuel (green bar on the right side of the screen.) Both can be quickly replenished by setting down on a landing pad. You can find landing pads by following the green arrow around your helicopter. The closest enemy is pointed out by the red arrow around your helicopter.
There are two types of weapons you can use, missiles for air-to-air combat, and bombs for air-to-ground combat. These are also replenished when you run out by visiting a landing pad. Both weapon types can be upgraded by purchasing different levels for each while at a landing pad. You collect cash to buy these upgrades by defeating enemies and picking up the cash they leave behind. Some enemies, instead of dropping cash, will drop health powerups that replenish a portion of your health.
The first 6 chapters are mostly traning levels, and can get boring. While it helps to really let you get good with the game’s controls, so by the time you do get into some thick action, you’re pretty comfortable with the game by that point. Another issue I had are with the tanks. They are green and blend in with the grass of the scenery, making them hard to see and pinpoint your bombing. While camouflage is important in warfare, it only serves to frustrate in games. I’d like to see the tank as a different color. Sometimes when chasing an enemy when you have few left, the enemy will go out of bounds (represented by a red line, which acts as an invisible wall) and when that happens the enemy will show up all the way across the map, making you have to fly all the way over there to destroy him.
When you land on a landing pad, you’re presented with a screen that shows your health and fuel being replenished right away, amount of cash you have available, and it’s also where you can upgrade your bombs and missiles to be more effective. You can also purchase an extra helicopter. Hidden in the upgrade panel is a screen that shows your statistics for the game. Stats tracked are the amount of tanks, planes, helicopters, and total units destroyed. Also the amount of total cash you’ve earned, helicopters you’ve lost, and total time you’ve been playing the game. Finally, you can abort the mission and return to the main menu.
Picking up the controls, thanks to six chapters of easy action, is very solid and tight. While it’s easy to pick up, mastering is part of the fun in shooting down enemies. The screen is divided up into four quadrants; tapping the top-left corner changes bomb types, tapping the bottom-left fires those bombs, upper-right changes missile types, and bottom-right fires missiles. When hovering over a landing pad, tapping your helicopter lands. Tilting the iPhone/iPod Touch turns your helicopter, and as mentioned before, you can calibrate to play the game in any position. I’d like to see the ability to strafe added. I don’t know how it could be implemented, but it’d be nice to have to add more mobility to your helicopter.
The visuals is a homage to the old days of video games on the console, and while your mileage may vary, I grew to like the style of the graphics. I would like to see more variety in the scenery though, even weather effects would go a long way. As mentioned above, I’d also like to see the tanks a different color, so they don’t blend in when they’re over grass. Explosions look good, as do your helicopter and the enemy types. The blimp is basic and seems to be oddly shaped. Most of my issues with the visuals are minor nitpicks at this point. Shadows are rendered well under flying vehicles, and can also provide early cues when you get close to them.
Sound effects are great, and really makes the game pop. Explosions are beefy, and weapons sound appropriate for what they do. Your own helicopter’s blades even sounds good, and never gets annoying. As you move faster or slow down, so does the tempo of the blade’s sound changes accordingly. The music is also well done and complements the game, and according to the developer features an hour’s worth of music throughout.
All said and done, Blue Skies Air Force Academy lives up to my memories of this genre of shooters. The game feels polished, the controls are smooth and easy to learn, and although the game starts off slow, the fun kicks up once the training wheels come off. I would like to see more variety though; in weapons, scenery, enemy types, and gameplay modes (capture the flag would work well in this game, especially multiplayer.) Finally, a shooter worth playing on the iPhone.
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wow whoever made this needs to get a life or at least talk to a girl for change!