Coming this spring, one of the smoothest playing, coolest looking “1942″ shooter style games in while to hit the App Store.
Binary Mill is a relatively new group of developers that has focused on CG animation in the past to “pay the bills.” They have brought this talent into play with their stunning 1942-styled arcade shooter, Assault Squadron. As I’ve said before, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for top-down space shooting games. I used to pump quarter after quarter into the 1942 arcade cabinet at the local pizza joint when I was a kid. There’s just something about massive waves of enemies, ridiculous power ups and and super bombs, and huge bosses.
In Assault Squadron, you get all of the above + cinema quality CG cutscenes to pull the story together. Oh, and I should mention that the action switches between both top-down and side scrolling views to mix things up. It’s truly a wild ride, as this game has all the crazy weapons, bosses, and levels that I’ve been waiting to see on the iPhone since the beginning! There have been other top-down shooters, such as Siberian Strike, that worked well, and were certainly fun. However, no other game I have seen for the iPhone has captured the crazy arcade madness like Assault Squadron has.
Gameplay is pretty straight forward. You can control your ship from anywhere on the screen, and you automatically fire. You lift you finger from the screen for a second or two to start firing your secondary weapon (needs to charge up), and double tap for the big bombs. You collect different colored orbs to power up your weapons or give you point multipliers. If you can beat the boss/level without dying, you will have a massive point multiplier at the end of the level, which will boost your score quite nicely. Under normal mode, you have 10 continues to use, but under the highest difficulty you get none. Yikes!
As I mentioned before, the game will follow a storyline that’s accented with fantastic CG cutscenes. You will be able to choose from two ships at first, but can unlock two more as you play through the game. Each ship will have completely unique primary/secondary weapons and smart bombs. I was hoping to see multiplayer support, but at the moment that’s not available. Despite this, with 4 different ships to play through, 3 different difficulties, and global high scores, it sounds like Assault Squadron has plenty to offer.
I’ve been playing a preview build of this game for a couple days now, and I’m having a blast. Looking forward to the final release.
