Aegis Wing

Aegis wing is a free arcade shooter that is available on the American Xbox marketplace. Players take control of a space ship as it travels through six levels of space-faring action. The most unique aspect of the game is it's four player co-operative mode. This mode can be played over live or with local players and is the main reason for the games popularity, along with it's non-existent price.

The game controls like a typical shooter, using only the analog stick and two buttons. The A button fires the ships lasers whereas the B button uses a special weapon. These special weapons are acquired in the form of large power-ups floating around the levels and once acquired they grant the player limited access to one of four unique abilities: A green circle will allow players to create a force field which reflects bullets, a blue cylinder allows players to fire a large beam at enemies which reaches the length of the screen, a missile will allow players to fire several homing rockets which home in on enemies and a golden box will allow players to release a fossilization field which will dissolve enemy projectiles and turn any nearby enemies into black rocks.

The co op mode, as mentioned earlier is the most popular aspect of the game. One reason for this is the player's ability to connect to friendly ships, this connection grants their special weapons more power and allows them to fire in all directions. The downside of this connection is that the ship will become bigger and therefore harder to maneuver around enemy fire. Multiplayer is also favored as the difficulty of the game will not scale, because of this it is easier to complete the game with 4 players than any other number. The game has two difficulties, however this is simply a change in the number of lives the players' possess. On normal mode each player starts with four lives, on insane mode each player starts with 0 lives. Once a players lives have run out his friends must carry on without him however if a player is to pick up a ship power up then the friend will be brought back to life instantly, this mechanic keeps the game fun as players can always bring back their friends to help them.