Aces of the Galaxy

"Greetings Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and Ko-Dan Armada!" So starts the videogame in one of the most underrated sci-fi movies ever, The Last Starfighter. Obviously inspired by this great film, the creators of the recently released Aces of the Galaxy present a new shooter with an old school feel.

In Aces, gamers play as a lone human space pilot who faces overwhelming odds to protect the Earth from ugly, trash talking aliens. Replace the Ko-Dan Armada with the Skurgian Armada and the story for this game starts to feel familiar. If you had a sidekick that looked like an iguana this game may as well be called "The Last Starfighter Returns"

Gameplay consists of piloting your ship through a pre-determined path, blasting away at enemy vessels of different sizes and abilities so numerous it fills your screen. Luckily your small craft is well equipped for combat as its armed with a chain gun, torpedoes and cluster missiles. It takes a little bit of time to master these weapons along with your ships other features (barrel rolling, a scanner, the temporal shift/bullet time button) because the action in Aces is so fast, but once you figure it out, the game is almost impossible to turn off.

In the old school space shooter tradition, Aces lacks save points between levels -- so once you croak, you'll have to start from the beginning. The fairly high difficulty level will also discourage those new to the genre. These issues aside, Aces of the Galaxy is great fun. Blasting alien scum, avoiding mines and meteors as you put up with the self-absorbed (yet hilarious) villains will bring out anybody's inner Alex Rogan.

PROS: New take on old school space shooter, co-op play is fun and lag free
CONS: Saves between levels would have been nice

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