May the Force be with You

Considering that today is the 4th of July holiday, I thought that it would be nice to review a game with which you could relax.

A few days ago I came across Sky Force which has been one of the most popular PocketPC games and was the winner of the 2005 Handango Champions Awards as “Best Application for Play”.  To my delight, Sky Force has now been released for our Treo.

Sky Force is a completely addictive arcade plane-ship shooter with 3D interactive objects (such as planes, bombers, boats, artillery, aircraft carriers, turrets), fantastic graphics, awesome special effects and soundtrack.  In short, Sky Force is about as perfect fun as games of this type come.

Sky Force offers complete one handed play and full 5Way button support.  There are 7 levels, 3 difficulty modes, 3 types of ‘ships’, tons of enemies to shoot and good old Earth to save.  As you progress in the game you’ll be collecting stars for bonus points, shield power and additional weapons all while making sure that you don’t get hit by too much incoming enemy fire and destroy as many of their units as possible.

During gameplay, the top left area displays information about your remaining lives and shield power – which you’ll likely check frequently.  The center has your score and the top right the percentage of enemy units destroyed. (Please note that the screenshots above are not from a Treo screen because an error message kept me from grabbing my own.)

There’s no doubt that arcade shooters are among my favourite game categories (they bring out the kid in me…) with other titles such as Zap!2016 and Hellfire high on my list while Warfare Inc. is probably at the top of it.  However, overall it is disappointing that there are so few good titles available and also some more variety such as tanks and armoured cars for example (although I hear that a couple are in development).

In this light, it’s been fantastic to find such an amazingly good game as Sky Force and (leaving the best for last) at $9.98 it’s an absolute bargain to boot!  I have no doubt that now that Sky Force is available for our Treo it will become one of the single most popular games for it.

[Please note that you can use can use the promotion code SPECIAL for 15% off until the end of today or CHAMPIONS for 10% off until July 7 in the Treonauts Software Store.]

Treonauts will always have the force on their side…