A "simple and basic version of (Capcom's) 1945". While this would usually be little more than a mere tautology, the two developers responsible for Jet Pilot actually succeeded at further simplifying the classic WWII shooter.

Using reliable, indirect touch controls, you steer a brave Australian plane across an infinite amount of stages and thus islands in the Pacific, taking down presumably Japanese air crafts. Enemies severely lack variety, either flying across the screen all on their own or in small formations, interspersed by the occasional bigger guys, coming in from the back and firing off multiple bullets at once while soaking in numerous of your shots. It's all very old-school, with bullets making up for their low number with their sheer speed, levels all feeling and looking the same, and an additional button triggering your limited stock of screen-clearing bombs.

There are definitely worse choices on the App Store to pick than this one, but also much better alternatives in its niche of uncomplicated, endlessly looping time-wasters. If you're still intrigued by it, though, there is at least a free lite version to try. Although one might want to argue that the whole game could be better off being free of charge anyways.

This Chinese one-man-show is quite an oddity in how it handles its free lite version. Where other developers usually limit their lite versions to a fraction of the full game's levels or merely add ads without changing the actual contents, Ace Shooter is nice enough to be a better game in its lite iteration than in its full form. Both are exactly the same except for the lite version limiting your hit points to 333 instead of 999. Since any enemy or bullet contact only deduces a single hit point and the game would already be easy enough without such a generous life system, 999 hit points render suicide nigh impossible, let alone dieing unintentionally. Even though there is no way to restore any hit points throughout the 48 levels, this is an utterly and completely ridiculous design choice and the lite version at least slightly remedies it.

While every stage proudly introduces a new enemy type, they all share the fate of being nothing but cannon fodder and credit dispensers. Downed foes leaves behind yellow orbs, displaying a slowly decreasing number, indicating the amount of cash earned for picking it up. This cash can be invested in upgrades and a smart bomb at any time, by simply tapping the desired item at the bottom of the screen. Unless you completely avoid picking up the orbs, however, you'll be overpowered from about one minute into the game onwards. The strongest upgrade (four supporting ships independently chasing down enemies) costs only 500 points and it lasts for roughly an entire stage, so when I already had about 6,800 points left after stage six, despite constantly using the upgrade, this says a lot about the game's lack of balance.

On eight occasions you'll also be pitted against bosses, that might look intimidating due to their increased rate of fire, but then you remember your nearly infinite hit point supply, and simply fire away. Ace Shooter is as poorly designed a shooter as they come, but if you're looking for a meditatively easy shooting journey – possibly fighting insomnia late at night in bed – it could be worth a look.

Ever wondered what happened to the smaller enemies that at some point in time must have existed in the world of Phoenix and Phoenix HD- They took refuge in Firi Games' other shooter, Flare Elite, where they are forced to spend their lives in shame, deep within the mighty shadow of Phoenix' glory.

Metaphors aside, Flare Elite is an utterly sub-par mess of a game you wouldn't believe to have been created by the same guys responsible for Phoenix, if it wasn't for many sound effects being recycled. These and the original retro soundtrack consisting of four passable tracks are about the only positive aspects to find here, while the positive impression the sound leaves is already marred by bland, uninspired and repetitive visuals. While the background in Phoenix would also repeat constantly and the variety of enemies also wasn't all that big to begin with, they were at least carefully designed with tons of neat little details, and beautiful explosions and lighting would further improve the visuals. None of this can be found in Flare Elite.

The game foregoes the approach of asking the player to derive his motivation from achieving a high-score in favor of, uhm... There really isn't much substituting this. Your journey is split up into thirteen stages that are filled with incredibly boring (and ugly) spaceships and turrets, and enemies are repeated constantly, making it hard to even play beyond the first level, simply out of boredom turning into pure rage. You'll eventually unlock new weapons and an upgrade shop for said weapons, but no shooter can survive on weapons alone, if the receiving end of your weapons don't deliver, which is the case here.

Firi Games were seemingly quite proud of some unusual design choices, regardless of the overall lack of quality. For starters, all missions are connected via a "star map". So you choose a level from an ugly, empty map. Whoa, big deal. A simple menu would have the same visual appeal as THIS map, plus, it would require less dragging and searching for certain stages. Another ham-fisted attempt at innovation is the energy/health system: Your ship's energy meter is constantly depleting, as well as decreasing when your ship is hit by enemy attacks, and you need to replenish it by collecting orbs, which are left behind by defeated foes. This system adds nothing to the experience, it seems to only have been included for one simple reason: Hiding the awkward controls.

They are described as being unique to this game and I don't doubt it. But if nobody would copy a control system, despite many similar games appearing on the same device, that's probably saying something about the quality of said mechanics. Some restrictive shooters on the iPhone are using a slider for steering your ship, which usually works great for motions limited to either the y-axis or x-axis. In Flare Elite, however, you need to use two sliders at the same time, one for moving horizontally and one for vertical movements. It's like rubbing your belly and hitting your forehead at the same time, just not as much fun as that. What I ended up doing, was placing my thumbs on both sliders and then move both of them wherever I wanted to head for, rather than using the sliders the way they were intended to. While this comes somewhat close to relative touch controls, it means having two fingers obscuring the action instead of just one, and you constantly need to reposition your fingers. Luckily, the energy system means you'll rarely run out of energy anyways.

Released in February 2009, SpaceX is one of the earliest shooters to hit the iPhone. Unfortunately, even after just two years it's already safe to say that it hasn't aged gracefully. In randomly generated levels you are never treated to any kind of backdrop besides a bland space vista, and enemies and the player ship lack inspiration and animation. At least the techno soundtrack – if a single track can be called a soundtrack – holds up surprisingly well, if you're into its admittedly a bit cheesy, heavy-on-bass style.

Gameplay in SpaceX is about as bland as the background is. There are no bosses to be fought or surprises to be found, just the same few enemy kinds repeated over and over again. Enemies are nearly impossible to destroy without taking hits yourself, since they immediately begin releasing a constant stream of bullets straight ahead as soon as they appear and they also take too much damage from your standard weapon, so when they suddenly start moving towards the center of the screen, you're basically guaranteed to take a hit.

After each stage you're given the possibility to purchase new weapons, hulls and upgrades in a shop, using credits earned by defeating enemies. This alleviates the imbalance to a certain degree, but it does nothing against the general blandness and after a while – if you've lasted this long without giving up on the game – you'll have purchased the best equipment, with enemies still growing stronger and thus catching up on you and then some, culminating in the same annoying imbalance from the beginning. Despite SpaceX basically being playable (the touch controls leave nothing to be desired), there really is no reason to waste any time on this poorly designed, highly amateurish piece of software.

The vertical shooter genre on i-devices already saw the release of mobile phone classic Sky Force and its sequel, delivering solid if a little uninspired fun. In July 2011 German developer Sprakelsoft – solely consisting of Benjamin Sprakel – decided to port its own mobile shoot 'em up, Pacific Wings, delivering...not much of anything.

On your way through six stages you fly across a nearly endless array of tiny Pacific islands and a peaceful (as in: bland and never-changing) disposing of the very same planes over and over and over. And over. The skies are cluttered with slow, yellow planes coming in from the front interspersed with a handful of green ones sticking to the same looping formation every time and a few white planes attacking your from behind and the odd bigger plane. That's it, really. 1942 didn't offer more enemy variety than this, but it made up for it with sheer panic when new foes would appear frequently and frantically zip around the screen. Here, though, the speed has been toned down considerably.

Trying to balance this out, the enemies's shot frequency has been raised, making later stages quite difficult unless you are equipped with a weapon upgrade. The best gun enables you to enjoy the tropical vista rather safely, but dieing downgrades your arsenal by one level, leaving you behind in serious trouble, albeit not as big a trouble as a Gradius game would. Despite the touch controls working perfectly, you will still often feel like not being responsible for your deaths. Unless your weapons are fully upgraded, you won't be able to destroy all foes and they tend to suddenly shoot at you from behind or even from outside the screen and sometimes you'd swear there wasn't even a bullet close-by.

Pacific Wings is boring. Not so much frustrating as plain old boring. Playing the game once with fully powered-up machine guns can provide decent distraction from waiting for a bus, but once you've been powered-down or you need to start the whole game over from scratch, you'll instead wish for something else to play. At least it's free (showing small ad bars at the title screen and inbetween levels unless you pay $2), the orchestrated musical score would suit a lot of shooters pretty well and the progress percentage indicator at the top right is a neat idea, potentially motivating you to "just hold out for those final 10%". Other developers are invited to copy this for a better game.