Assault Squadron is a shoot ‘em up that sets itself far, far apart from all the other shooters out there for multiple reasons:

1. Variety: Four different ships with different weapons (3 from the start + 1 unlockable).
2. You keep your power-ups even if you die: Now I can already hear you say “hmm this game is gonna be too easy then.” Let me stop you right there. This game is HARD! And the power-ups are welcomed and vital if you want to stay alive. What you do lose when you die is all the power-up orbs that you were collecting until the next upgrade.
3. Special weapon deployment: The way you fire your special weapon is by not touching the screen for a couple seconds. I find this to make for nerve-wracking gameplay though.
4. Engaging: The mix of top down and horizontal shooter makes for a very refreshing experience and will prevent you from getting bored.
5. Great Art: Gorgeous 3D rendered cut scenes (which you can choose to disable by playing in arcade mode).
6. Voice over: A which reads out the menu explanations and tells you when you reach the next power upgrade when you’re playing.

The last two points are often overlooked by many developers, but make the difference between a game that feels like an app and one that really immerses the player and makes him feel like he’s playing on a good ‘ol arcade machine. Assault Squadron is definitely one of the later.

Power-ups are obtained by shooting as many enemies as you can and collecting the different colored orbs they leave in their wake. Those orbs will automatically go towards your ship as soon as you get close enough, a nice little addition that definitely helps you to go the extra mile.

The 4 control scheme and 3 different difficulty levels will assure that every type of player from the casual to the hardcore one has fun all throughout the game.

The only thing I would have against this game is also one of it’s differentiation points. The fact that you don’t lose the power-ups when you die also means that if you mess-up your game at the beginning and miss the early power-ups opportunities, you will stay overpowered by all  enemies for the rest of the game. Basically, if you haven’t reached level 5 in weapon power by the end of the first level, you might as well start over.

All and all though, this game is amazing. I have been playing a lot of shooters lately and was craving one that will let you have awesome/crazy power-ups and this was perfect.

THUMBS UP   d (^_^) b

Raptor: Rapid straight firing bullets + rockets and an special that will hit the closest enemy, propagating itself to the next nearest enemy and so on.

Phoenix: Wide spread forward firing (shotgun style) + rockets and a special that fires 4 lasers at 4 different angles in front of the ship! (This ship is, in my opinion, far better and way over-powered compared to the other ones… But maybe it’s just because it’s the right one for me :p )

Scorpion: This ship fires in all directions, has homing plasma bombs, and a special that will fire a straight ray of electricity at the enemy in front of you and won’t cease fire until enemy is eliminated (kind of a good and a bad thing at the same time since that is all you’re shooting during that period of time!)

Rhino: You unlock this ship once you finish the game. It has a tesla canon shooting up to 3 bullets straight in front of the ship backed with ionic torpedos and a special that will fire a HUGE laser beam straight in front of the ship.

(Each ship can also unleash a different mega-bomb that should clear most of the screen of enemies. This is engaged by double tapping anywhere on the screen)