Progression and customizability are always nice to have in a game. There is more than happiness to it, part of losing is recognizing what your weakness was during a given mission, so your goal might switch from trying to have the strongest gun, to having a more durable ship or even a stronger magnet to attract stars. I might not be the best one to describe it, but I actually felt a little sad once I ran out of upgrades. Just like leveling up your favorite avatar in an RPG, there is a lot of happiness in upgrading your ship. Entering a mission with the goal of collecting enough stars to power up your main gun becomes a goal in itself, and thanks to the way Sky Force handles death, then you are free to go into stages with only progression in mind. Rather than focusing on not dying to preserve your power, the game changes into one of try to acquire as much currency to be able to afford those expensive upgrades. While it might not seem like it, being able to permanently power up makes all the difference in the world. The difference is that Sky Force presents you with a long term plan for attaining full power, and a permanent one at that! If you are thinking that this is already featured in other games in the way of in-stage powerups or items, well, you are actually right. The upgrades include health, main cannon, side cannon, homing missiles, magnet and even special items such as the mega bomb. You can upgrade various aspects of your ship. The ship upgradesĪt the heart of this game, lies the ability to upgrade your ship’s capabilities using stars. But what ARE stars? Well, I’m glad you asked! Stars are your main currency which is used outside of the levels for a variety of things. It might also be because the game refuses to display your HP unless you are being hit or close to being hit, which in my opinions feels like an odd design choice.īeating the stage and defeating enemies will earn you stars. These deaths are 100% the player’s fault, don’t get me wrong on that, but they all leave a sour taste of unfairness in your mouth when you can’t properly pinpoint the cause of your demise. About half of my deaths felt odd because of this, you can usually recognize when you screwed up and a bullet is bound to hit you, but when the bullets are too many or just weren’t registered by your brain, then you just disintegrate. Sky Force features HP, so the lack of immunity means that sometimes… you just die. The reason shmups don’t usually adopt this, is because 1 hit usually means death. This is more common for platforming games, such as Mega Man or Castlevania featuring invincibility (commonly referred to as iframes) after being hit. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a lack of immunity after being hit. You can retry any stage as much as you want, so don’t feel pressured to bring your A-game. You only have 1 life, but thanks to the HP you can take multiple hits before going down. Using a combination of your weapons, you must survive a given stage to the end and fight the boss (or not) before completing the stage. The gameplayĮach stage features an auto-scrolling map filled with enemies that must be (or not) defeated. While your actual flight time might be as simple as it sounds, all the beauty of Sky Force lies in what you do between missions and how you progress throughout the game. You would be completely wrong to assume this is what this game is about though. The gameplay is as basic as you would expect, with you being a ship that shoots and avoids the enemy, who is also shooting. Sky Force: Reloaded is a unique shmup among the catalogue. Despite shmups being born from arcade origins, there is something great about diving into the familiar waters of permanent progression. Sky Force: Reloaded’s beauty is present in a lot of things, but what wraps it all together is a very satisfying gameplay loop that borders on addiction. But this isn’t about dogs, is it? Just like dogs, shmups come in very varied shapes and sizes, and despite all of them being part of the genre, they offer their own unique beauty to behold. There are all sorts of dogs in all sizes and colors, with different hair and different behavior. In a sense it is similar to people who consider themselves dog people. Despite all the games featured in this list being shmups, they are all very different.
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