Astro Flyer is the first game (I think) from Game Reclaim and quite a good one it is too. It’s a fairly simple game where you have a spaceship and have to weave in 3d through various levels collecting as many stars as you can. Think “Star Fox” on the N64 but not as detailed and without foxes. You use the mouse to weave the ship from side to side and can boost with the mouse button, which is a nice idea.

The graphics are what set this game apart, the  3d effect is really quite slick, although its just scaling a series of movie clips with 3d projection it does really have a good 3d feel, its very similar to missile 3d from DX interactive which came out a while back. The graphics all have a cell shaded appearance which really hangs together nicely, in fact the overall presentation levels are excellent.

The only problem with Astro Flyer as a game as it is a little bit frustrating at times. It’s quite difficult to judge where your ship is in the 3d world. So I often find I’ve moved left and have hit an obstacle which I thought I’d flown past. Game Reclaim has a version on his own site which you can play in full screen, which I found made this less of a problem. I think this is a general problem though with these scaled 3d games, my own game cubex suffers from the same problem.

Anyway overall its a nice bit of technology turned into a slick looking game, which is generally quite fun to play.

Go play Astro Flyer.

Ghost tank is the first game from developer Roland Machaalani of id8games.com. The basic premise is that you have failed your mission and come back as a ghost tank to complete your mission, well its never going to win an award for best plot but then the same could be said for most games.

So what do you do ? Well deep down its just an 8 way shooter, you control a tank and have a variety of enemies to shoot up from turrets to helicopters or stealth fighters which mainly fire missiles at you. When you first start you have 3 mission types training, normal, or insane. The big thing which sets ghost tank apart from similar games is the control system. Most games the missiles fire at where you click,ghost tank employs a click and drag system where the longer you drag the bigger the missiles you fire. At first I thought this was a good thing and it is for the training missions. However on the levels with lots of enemies I generally found it slightly frustrating, especially as once you’d clicked you can’t change the angle of fire. I’d suggest a click and hold for power, rather than drag would work sightly better. In the heat of the battle I found I was killed far too easily. I also found it frustrating that bullets collide with each other, it’s one of the only games I know where that happens and it’s annoying as when you and the enemy fire a lot of the time it ends in stalemate as the bullets just blow each other up. You do have a number of power ups such as 360 fire and “ghost mode”, which are written in small type on the main menu. It was quite a few goes before I realised these were there, it would be better if these were introduced throughout the tutorial.

Graphically Ghost tank is pretty good, there’s a nice menu and all the typography is well thought out, the tanks and enemies are nicely drawn if a little bland. The worst part graphically is the battlefield which is a little dull, and the explosion effects could have been a bit better.

The game has obviously had a lot of effort put into it and has been really well put together, nicely coded and is generally fun to play if a little “hard core” in places. Its comes in slightly below Tank 2008 by Freeworld Group, but is a good game in the genre. Amazing job for a first game and has an original control system, even if I found it slightly awkward to use.

Go and Play Ghost Tank.

Firstly I apologise if the site has been a bit up and down over the past week, I have had some terminal server problems and had to move to a new host. Well enough of that on with the review

This little gem of a game from abduction studios popped into the mochiads feed about 2 weeks ago and I must have played it everyday since then. The basic premise is that you start with a hundred bullets and have to hit a number of shapes. Abduction Sums it up himself as…

“BoomsticK pits you and your trusty shotgun against a relentless onslaught of insane shapes. 21 Tiers of shape shooting, particle blastin, power-up grabbin madness! Compare your sick score to the entire world and flaunt your BoomsticK skills.

The story is incredibly deep, you are, well… I what I mean to say is that… hmmm… wait, I was all worried like I forgot some incredible story! But there is no story! Whew, that was easy enough.”

Its slightly more complicated than that as you only get back bullets which hit objects, so the idea is to line up shots which will take out multiple targets. It sounds complicated but it isn’t and its incredibly satisfying pulling off a quad kill. One tactic I have found is that if you shoot as horizontally as you can from the sides you get a much better spread, that is my tip of the day, oh as well as mustard goes well with apple slices.

Its so good a game I invented the robotJAM “awesome game of the month*” and BoomsticK is the awesome game for March.

Anyway I don’t think I can waffle on any more about such a simple game.. go and stick some BoomsticKs.

(* if you read this abduction I will send you a free robotJAM T-shirt)