Shades of Space Invaders from my lost youth and many lost quarters: Orbital Wars (US$0.99) really did bring back memories of those many hours I spent in front of an arcade console and some of my home video consoles playing that classic game and fighting off endless hordes of aliens descending on my hapless spaceship.
Orbital Wars shows just how far graphics have come since the old days. The enemies are detailed, the explosions are colorful, the backgrounds are beautifully rendered. The game even has a 3D mode that works if you have an old pair of Red/Cyan glasses hanging around. I tried the 3D mode and liked the extra depth the glasses provided.
The app has a nice music score, but you can turn it off. As you move to higher levels the ships come faster and they appear to have their shields up because they are much harder to destroy. As in similar games, your ship fires continuously, so all you have to do is move left and right to try to intercept the enemy. You do that by tapping the left or right side of the screen. Often I could not move over fast enough to make a kill. I think I'd like the game better if there was an option to tilt my iPhone left or right to move my ship.
There is full Game Center support, and happily no ads or irritating in-app purchases. Even after a lot of playing, I found I kept coming back for more, seeking higher levels to get me better armaments. Orbital Wars is not a deep strategy game, it's just a move and shoot, but it has the appeal of Space Invaders that sucked me dry of so many quarters many years ago.
Orbital Wars requires iOS 4.3 or greater. It's universal, and works only in portrait mode on an iPad. It worked fine under the latest iOS 8 beta.
Recommended.
Orbital Wars takes me way back originally appeared on TUAW: Apple news, reviews and how-tos since 2004 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.