MiniSquadron!

MiniSquadron! is among the cluster of games that support Open Feint that were released last week. It is a port of an iPhone game that has received much acclaim in which you control a plane in a 2D horizontal scrolling environment. Your goal? To shoot down anything and everything that comes your way. Upon starting a game you get to choose a plane from 56 choices. Of course, 55 of them are locked away initially, but over time you earn the right to use them. You then fly onto the screen, shoot down some geese to get acquainted with the controls and then in come the enemies.

The graphics are colorful and attractive and the sound consists of a nice background soundtrack along with appropriate sound effects for crashing, gun fire, ...etc. The background sound track does eventually get old, but it can easily be turned off from the Options screen. Controls are primarily touch screen based with an on screen directional pad that allows you to simply point where you want your plane to go and a fire button. The game also supports multiplayer although only over local Wi-Fi.

One thing that's really nice is that the directional pad makes it easy to fly where you want to. Sure, it takes some time to get used to. But after a while you'll be enjoying the satisfaction of not only shooting down an enemy, but being able to tail them and shoot them down with consecutive shots. That's one of my favorite rushes that I can get from a plane game. In addition to enemies, there are also bonus stars to collect that will yield special abilities such as 'ghost' which temporarily makes your plane invisible while you continue to pump lead into your adversaries.

In this game the air space is limited so it's possible to not only fly too high (and stall), but also too far to the left or right. If you do that then your plane will automatically turn around and head back in the other direction. As for issues with the game, my biggest is the lack of any support for my hardware DPad/keyboard. I really wish more companies would take note of this facility on some Android devices. It can't be that hard to support. I am pleased to say that App2SD support is present which is nice given that this is a sizable game. Oh, and this game also reminds me that Android owners need a good 'flight simulator' game.

Summary? The presentation is great, the game plays smooth, and the controls are even good enough for me to play for an extended session of game play. The in game bonus stars and the armada of available planes provide a reason to keep playing beyond the simple fact that this game is lots of fun. 5/5 stars. A game play video is available below and there is a lite version in the Market to try out.