SkySmash 1918

The past few weeks I haven’t been reviewing too many apps because of the backlog of free codes, and now that it’s time to get back to reviewing stuff I can’t think of a better way to do it than with a kickass shmup!

SkySmash 1918 is your basic top-down shooter, a la Hotfield and iFighter, and it’s beautiful. It seems like Richard Wilson didn’t put a ton of thought into the design of some of the menus, but screw menus! It’s the game that counts, and the game itself is really a sight to behold. I guess it’s mostly the ground graphics that have me so impressed. When you’re playing this type of game, the entire backdrop is what’s beneath your plane (in this case it’s a biplane, actually) and SkySmash’s ground looks really nice. Crisp is probably a better word. Everything else in the game is top-notch as well… from the way the biplane moves and tilts to the Hogan’s Heroes soundtrack to all the crap that’s exploding in the sky around you, it’s got all the trademarks of a very well produced shooter.

Like most shooters in this genre, each of the 9 levels has an objective and a big boss fight at the end. The objective might be to destroy 80% of the enemies or it might simply be to not get your ass handed to you by the all the enemy guns pointed in your direction, and the bosses are tough but not unbeatable. Of course I say this after playing almost exclusively on Easy mode, but if you get good enough at SkySmash then you can try it on Medium or Hard and judge for yourself.

Powerups occasionally appear, and if you pick them up you’ll be rewarded with things like Time Warp (slows down the enemy), Smart Bomb, Wingmen, or if you’re really lucky, an extra life. I love powerups to death because they just make the game that much more fun to play, but there are two big bummers in SkySmash: (a) they usually don’t last very long, and (b) if you die then you lose the powerup as well. Things like Smart Bombs that give you a single-use advantage obviously aren’t subject to the really short timespan, but if you get the one that makes your plane invincible you should be prepared to die immediately thereafter since you’ll no doubt be flying through a hail of gunfire when it wears off.

Another thing about the powerups that kind of bugs me is that you have to tap the TOP of the screen to activate them. The powerup button is contained in a console that’s at the top and it looks nice and all that, but the location seems kind of inconvenient when you’re trying not to die.

Control options are great, though… they include Touch and Relative Touch (although the two seem mostly the same to me) and the latest update added tilt to the mix.

Aside from my complaints about the powerups, the only other things I can whine about are the lack of global high scores and the lack of iPod support. The soundtrack and SFX in this game are good enough that I actually wouldn’t want to listen to my own crappy 80s music anyway, but I still cling to my belief that every single arcade shooter in the App Store should be equipped with global scoring.

In the end, SkySmash is an awesome game overall. The gameplay is fluid, sound and graphics are totally pro, and I think it’s a major steal for just $.99. If arcade action is what you’re after, you really can’t go wrong with this one.

iTunes Link – SkySmash 1918
Version 1.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2