When Aces of the Galaxy, an Xbox Live Arcade game developed by Artech Studios and published by Sierra Online, touted itself to be a “non-stop, old-school arcade thrill ride,” I was somewhat skeptical. How many times have we heard awesome descriptions just to discover the game is worth less than the surprise my dog leaves in tightly-coiled piles in my [neighbor's] yard? Does this game live up to the picture the description paints, or will this be just another mediocre Xbox Live Arcade title? Hit the jump to find out!

The plot behind is that you are a human pilot who has stolen a special fighter, the OMEGA PROTOTYPE, from the Skurgian Empire. The Skurgians, clearly not known for their generosity, wants their ship back or destroyed. This part of the plot is revealed at the beginning of the game and is not developed further. There are short dialogs between missions, but these dialogs doesn’t add any depth to the game as much as they pay homage to sci-fi films such as Star Wars and Space Balls. I found myself reading the cut scenes and trying to guess what movies the scenes borrowed from.

The game has three different mission paths. The three paths are called Dark Star, Asteroids, and Ice Nebula and follow fire, asteroid (duh), and ice themes (again… duh) respectively. The player can’t choose a path unless they collect the Warp power-up in the level. This design choice may be irritating for people trying to collect the some of the achievements.

The objective is to survive to the end of each level. Your ship is equipped with three weapons: a chain gun, homing missiles that lock onto enemies, and torpedoes that just destroy anything unlucky enough to be in their way. The ship has a temporal shift function that slows down time and a scanner that can detect invisible enemy ships which I’ll discuss in a second.

To balance the firepower your ship is equipped with, the game will throw tons of enemies at you at a time. The enemy ships have a wide array of attacks like chain guns, plasma rays, and even kamikaze attacks. The ridiculous amount of enemy ships that fills the screen will force the player to use multiple weapons at once. Some enemies will be cloaked and will reveal themselves moments before they fire their weapon. The player can use the scanner to uncover a cloaked enemy before the enemy attacks.

There are five power-ups that can be collected during the level. Each weapon has an upgrade power-up to increase the rate of fire and damage. Only one weapon can be powered-up at a time, so players must be careful not to accidentally lose a preferred power-up. A health power-up is also available to repair your ship. The fifth power up is the warp power-up mentioned above.

The presentation is very nice overall. The graphics of the ships and objects are well-designed, although you’re not likely to get opportunities to admire them. I rarely experienced any frame-rate drops, and the drops that I did experience were minor and did not adversely affect the game play.

The controls are tight and responsive, but the button layout is a little odd at times. Having to bring your finger off the A-button (chain-gun) to scan for invisible enemies using the Y-button can bring a player to an early grave. An option to map the buttons how the player chooses would have definitely helped, but this is a minor inconvenience at most and will probably not bother most people.

I enjoyed Aces of the Galaxy tremendously. The action is definitely fast-paced and exciting. There is enough variation in the levels to keep the player’s attention to the end. I haven’t had an opportunity to try co-op yet, but I suspect that co-op will be just as much fun if not more fun than the solo game. My only real complaint was the game felt far too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

Aces of the Galaxy definitely succeeds in creating a “non-stop, old-school arcade thrill ride.” The presentation is well-executed, and the game play will leave fans of the genre on the edge of their seats. If you’re a fan of the the shooter genre, be sure to pick this up. Everyone else should at least give the demo a whirl. If you need someone to run the co-op with, hit me up on Xbox Live (GT: PraiseChaos).

I enjoyed every bit of it and can’t wait to see what Artech Studios does next!

Categories: PC, Reviews, Shooter, Xbox 360, Xbox Live