Stargunner

It has no story, and only four levels. The graphics are hideous: the sprites are huge and seem completely out of place. The controls seem fine, but don't save the game. Just compare it with Tyrian, which has beautiful, lush graphics and a wonderfully witty story with satirical jabs at media or the corporate world. And it came out one and a half years before Stargunner. Not to mention it is also free (just look up OpenTyrian in Google or here on GoG). Heck, even Wing Commander IV predates Stargunner by nine months! There's just no excuse for this game.

a childhood classic. happy to have it.

Okay, guys, honesty is the best policy, so I'm gonna drop a hot take: A game isn't hard if it's BS. And this shmup has many bad design decisions that make it BS. This was Apogee's swansong, and unfortunately, it really doesn't feel tested at all. Any difficulty selections are quickly moot when you start playing. The scaling is so off the charts that any stage is soon a serious chore to deal with. After chapter 0 and two thirds of chapter 1, my patience had run out completely. I'm sorry, I tried! I honestly tried. But at the end of the day, this just isn't a good shmup, freeware or not. And I have seen and even played my fair share of decent, even GREAT freeware shmups. My heart goes out to the developers, though, as I hope they were able to learn from their mistakes and make better games in this genre even as the Apogee label effectively faded out.

An Apogee game, the very last one, and one I had not played. I was very hyped and looking forward to th is. But...it was not to be. The sprrites are huge and poorly made, animations and effects are subpar, your attack graphics are the same with the enemy's. The levels are mostly variations of three themes (space, terran and oceanic), and the enemy sprites are uninspired. On one level you fight a floating megacity that has a size similar to your ship, and on the very next level you fight against realistic human battleship much larger than an enire floating city. The game itself is unnecessarily tough, with whole levels existing just to screw with the player. The end game bosses can either be exploited due to poor design, or they will totally murder you. And even worse, between each episode you lose your hard earned progress. This is not a game I can recommend, and I am grateful I got it for free. If it is not free, stay away!

Время таких игр безвозвратно прошло.