Sky Force Anniversary

For this title bearing the 10th anniversary stamp I somehow never heard about this series till now. Seeing that this was mainly on phones I could certainly see why it never came up on my radar. Since I didn’t even have a smartphone when they came out originally. This game is the third in the series and had free to play elements that aren’t apart of the PS4 release I’ve been playing. If you were expecting much of a story you’re not going to find that here. Far as I can tell you're an ace pilot that wants to blow up a bunch of evil doods that like giant mechanized machines.

As for the action it consists of piloting a fighter jet from the top down perspective. Similar to classic arcade shooters like 1942 and Raiden. Weaving between bullets and planes that fill the screen is what this game is all about. It has a good difficulty curve that starts off easy and ends off with some crazy bullet hell like moments by the time I reached the final level. Also has quite a bit of replay value. Each level has different tasks that require some skill to compete. Like not getting hit or blowing up every ship in the level. These also tally up medals that must be collected to open up the next level. Playing the same level over and over may sound boring but the progression system keeps it from starting to get stale.

I have not seen very many shooters like this with a permanent progression system so that makes it quite unique from my perspective. Starting off the ship only has a small peashooter but through the act of collecting stars from blown up enemies it slowly starts improving. Adding on side guns, laser,missiles and a bomb. The health of the ship and how much damage the base guns are apart of this system too. Thus I had a good reason to keep replaying stages once I got all the medals in one it would unlock a new difficulty to challenge me. Extra stars are gained from tackling the more difficult levels along with all the upgrades that slowly turn the plane in to a killing machine. Unless your really good I kinda feel like the game pretty much requires you to play the same stages a bunch to continue. Which might not be that fun for some but I think it does a solid job of giving you a reason to keep going. Oh a few free to play leftovers are kinda meh. Like the fact that the card that doubles your stars is just a random drop.

Almost every arcade shooter I’ve played consisted of me turning on infinite continues. Sure I tried to not get hit but getting blown up a bunch is pretty much a requirement depending on the shooter. Yet this time I really do feel like I’m getting better. As noted by getting a bunch of don't get hit medals in most of the levels. Which is cool and I ended up playing this a lot longer than normal. Which means I gladly recommend anyone play this if they enjoy top down shooters.