Armada Skies

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Armada Skies is an arcade style side scrolling shmup. Control one of a selection of fighters and shoot waves of incoming enemies and bosses in a sci-fi setting. Controls can't be remapped and resolution is fixed to 4 options, windowed and 3 resolutions below 1080p. There's no controller support, which would be fine but the keyboard controls aren't great and there's no support for mouse, either. For a 2017 game to not support 1080p, let alone 4K, is really not acceptable. This on top of the rest of the technical flaws in the game make this impossible to recommend. At least the graphics aren't retro pixel.

Very Nostalgic, similar with my very Childhood game(on old type nokia phone) \ (•◡•) /

6/10

Fails my straightforward Gradius test: namely, is this retro horizontal schmup at least as fun as the NES classic? It's a tall order, but so many of these titles are slapdash. In Armada Skies case, the issues are manifest: x The controls just never feel right: regardless of your ship's upgrade configuration, the *low* frame rate makes you feel both too slow and too fast to play skillfully. And given that contact with enemies & bosses is not an instant death, your ship ends up feel weightless as you occasionally just move *through* opposing ships to stake a better position. x Pointless upgrades: The "Homing Cannon" or whatever it is allows you to ping away at bosses while solely focused on avoiding incoming projectiles. It's not fun, but there's no better approach to annoyingly durable bosses. Also: a dozen secondary weapons and no toggle? Very honestly, had this game allowed you even a secondary switch, it would have improved affairs immeasurably. x Recurring bosses: You'll fight all, I don't know, 5? bosses in this game what feels like 4 times each. None of them are clever, most are suicidal, and all resort to chains of the same 5 or 6 projectile attacks in different intensitie…

Pros: - Decent graphics. - It offers some fun. - A bunch of weapons to try. Cons: - You start with a very low speed until you buy better parts. - Movement is kind of weird, like the collision isn't perfect. - Most weapons are kind of useless. - Some bosses towards the end of the game take years to kill. - It has some bugs like not ending the level after defeating the boss, so I had to restart the level. - Bad visual effects. They feel too static. The game had potential but towards the end it's not very good because of the problems. With more polish it could have been much much better. I also would have liked to see new unlockable weapons near the end of the game, because most weapons are weak to use against the last bosses. I give it a 5/10. By the way, I've beaten the game twice.