Luftrausers

... and then they take some pills and go crazy. That's what playing this game feels like, anyway. When I took of for my first flight, Wings of Fury was on my mind: lift of, fly left or right, find targets, shoot. About 5 seconds later, the screen was buzzing with missiles, planes, ship, and, well, more missiles, and it felt a whole lot more like Asteroids, dodging incoming planes and missiles left and right, all the while trying to actually hit something yourself - and then you die. It's a quick adrenaline rush, and it's enough of a rush to keep you coming back for more. The longer you play, the more you understand the underlying complexity of the game despite its simple mechanics: every new asset you unlock drastically changes a characteristic of your plane, and since you can freely combine three categories of assets, you're free to design your personal plane. Sick of always being shot down? Take the thicker body - it will take more hits, but it will slow you down considerably. Don't like engaging your targets head-on? Take the bullet-propelled engine and shoot down your pursuers while-u-flee! Wanna go kamikaze? Take the nuke body that will destroy everything on-screen the moment you die, because karma, bitches.

As a fan of classic arcade games, I like this a lot, because it offers instant action if you fancy a bit of an aerial WWII-flavoured scrap. It's a game that's meant to be played in small chunks, about half an hour max - just like arcade games of ye olde dayes. The controls are tight and the mechanic of being able to turn off your engine mid-flight is fresh and interesting. Plus, you can customise your plane with different parts, and finding your perfect combo can be a lot of fun. HOWEVER - If you consider that the game offers a short chunk of joy every so often rather than immersing you in several hours of gameplay, it's debatable as to whether it's worth £6.99 of your money. I'd say get it on sale and you'll get your money's worth, but at full price it's a bit high. Now, go and prang your kite in that bally Jerry's how's-your-father. The hairy blighter'll dicky-birdy, feather back on 'is Sammy, take a waspy, flip over on his Betty Harpers and get his can in the Bertie.

Achievement hunting, nothing else. If you want to live your OCD to the max, here's your game! One star added because of the short amount of time I actually had fun.

The game is pretty fun and it's clear it it could have been really good, but as it stands now this is more of a prototype rather than a finished game. There is only one game mode, the menu navigation is weird, there is one option that is supposed to allow you to change the color palette, but the problem is that it cannot actually be changed. Also, the fullscreen option is not saved, which means every time you start the game it will be windowed by default and you have to go the options menu to set it to fullscreen again. All in all, the game is fun, and although I find the music rather ho-hum, the artsyle is pretty neat but nothing impressive. However, it offers too little for the price it asks. I partly regret spending my money on it.

Luftrausers is a thoroughly satisfying arcade-style shoot 'em up. The general art style smacks of old German and even Prussian aesthetics. I would describe the general look of the game as Gameboy HD(original Gameboy) which I, in this case at least, really like and, while there are a lot of bad games trying to get by on 8-bit looks, this game is not one of them. The mechanics of the game are quite enjoyable with the amount of control you have of your plane and the manouvres you can pull off. The game challenges you to become better and better and soon I felt myself going "just one more game". For several days I have been meaning to play other games, but end up playing Luftrausers. I have put 13 hours into the game thus far and still want to go back for more. The music is interesting and changes depending on your parts as each type of part is tied to a piece of the music so when you change a part you change either the lead, drums or bass line. It's a pretty good dynamic soundtrack. Negatives: It lacks a "Default Controls" reset option. The Gog version seems to have an issue with not going to fullscreen even though it is set to fullscreen. It is a very minor issue and all you have to do is press F11 or Alt+Return and it goes fullscreen. I hope this issue will be fixed though.