Similar to Sky Force, Buster Red doesn't do anything significantly different from other shooters while still ending up being worthy of a recommendation. Its most unique trait also happens to be the one most likely to divide people's opinions: All 30 stages (20 more can be purchased) as well as all enemies, items, etc. are hand-drawn and it shows, for better or worse. On a strictly technical level the cartoony visuals are reminiscent of Flash games such as Alien Hominid, without reaching said game's polish and creativity in design, so while Buster Red's graphics are quite unique for an iOS shooter, they aren't necessarily something to write home about. Your mileage on this may vary, of course, as some might praise the visuals simply for their consistent pop-art style. The soundtrack manages to leave a less ambiguous impression simply by mixing tunes of various genres together (country, electronic rock, darker rock full of heavy bass sounds like Korn is known for) and by always keeping it in the background properly underlining the action without distracting from it.

Where other shooters feel the need to squeeze in some nonsensical story, as if being ashamed of the amount of action they pour out, Buster Red doesn't waste time with this and instead takes you straight from level to level, each getting increasingly difficult and long. The set-up of many short levels as opposed to a few elaborated stages lends itself to quick play sessions. The three difficulty settings, the additional second loop difficulty setting and the possibility of (painfully slowly) unlocking additional ships with different weapons amount to considerable replay value.

No matter which craft you choose, your main weapon suffices for most situations, but bosses tend to take ludicrous amounts of punishment before going down, dragging the eponymous busters into the spotlight. Certain (frequently appearing) enemies drop these items of which two can be stored at a time and activated at any time by tapping them on the screen. Lightning erases all enemy bullets and freeze smaller enemies for a while, the fireball travels a few centimetres before staying fixed for the rest of its existence, requiring precise aiming and making up for it in sheer power, and the laser shoots straight ahead, dealing additional damage. Except for one boss fight near the end of the game it's perfectly possible to get through without these busters, but boss fights are already too long with them, so it goes without saying that trying to defeat them with nothing but your standard weapon is simply aggravating. What's more, it's just fun to rip through enemy hordes with the laser and to perfectly place a fireball in some boss's path. The constant rate at which additional busters pop up guarantees a frenzied experience as you are always busy collecting and using them. Or at least you should be, since relying on your standard weapon reduces the game to be a bit too mundane.

A special mention goes to the level design. While most levels consist of nothing but various enemy patterns, some spice things up by including indestructible blocks, following different patterns. In some levels, these blocks independently shift about, requiring peripheral vision to properly keep an eye on all of them as well as on the enemies. Luckily, instead of moving completely erratically, they announce their next move by starting out extremely slow after every complete stop. In another set of stages a square block keeps moving left and right, soaking up any bullets that cross its path, making for both a shield and an obstacle. Elements like this, breaking up the standard course, aren't all that frequent, however, making the game feel a bit samey at times.

Touhou games apparently are a big inspiration for the iOS shooter development scene with games such as ISUD, ASCII Art Wars and especially Fantasy Night of Touhou drawing more or less from the prominent doujin series. Except for the blatant clone that is the latter game, Shoot the Magic possibly apes (or pays homage to, if you prefer) Touhou shooters the closest. It even makes no attempt at hiding its doujin origins, proudly claiming to have won a Beijing doujin programming festival. For anyone not that fit in Asian geography: Shoot the Magic's developer is located in China, like those of many other (good) iOS shooters are.

In typical Touhou style, your avatar is a cutesy girl, fighting other girls during boss fights. Despite these supposedly being somehow involved in your brother's disappearance, the story is barely noticeable and mainly serves as an excuse for unleashing pointless chit-chat before battles. Standard enemies and the backdrops are more original and less Touhou-inspired, as ice cones, cupcake knights and other equally whimsical and tasty-looking set out to defeat you in front of low-resolution mid-90s anime drawings. The music is delightfully cheerful and sounds distinctly Japanese and old-school, like something you would expect in an episode of Sailor Moon. On a strictly technical level, most of the visuals are sub-par, but the game manages to make up for it in style and charm, plus, the colourful almond-shaped enemy bullets variedly dance about, building circles, flowers and other objects.

Smart bombs are (awkwardly) activated by swiping up or down on the screen or alternatively by auto-bombing. Another unnecessary nuisance is your inability to access a large fraction of the lower end of the screen, but other than that the (relative) touch controls work flawlessly, something that cannot be said about the alternative d-pad controls. Your standard shot is a dense laser-like beam, sometimes enemies drop an item that switches your shot over to a spreader and back again, and some enemies also drop a temporary shield. That's really it, concerning game mechanics. Scoring completely relies on defeating more enemies and there is no semblance of a complex mechanic underlying the action.

Due to Shoot the Magic being freeware, it's rather easy to look past its simplicity and also to some degree past its brevity. The three stages and a special boss accessible from the main menu shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to beat and there is hardly any reason to revisit the game except for an occasional playthrough at some point in the distant future. Despite the high bullet count most people should be able to beat it in a sitting or two and there are no online leaderboards or achievements. The iTunes description promises new content like new stages, though it has done so for well over a year at this point, so you'd better not expect it to ever happen. There is a neat feature allowing for pictures to be turned into bosses, but I couldn't get it to work (the game simply doesn't let me pick any pictures).

If you at least remotely consider yourself a shooter aficionado (likely, as you're reading this article) and are somewhat knowledgeable in terms of iOS shooters (likely, as you've probably been reading prior sections of this article!), then you are likely to go through roughly three distinctive phases upon playing Lightning Fighter.

The first phase obviously commences right at the beginning, as you boot the game for the first time or even slightly before. The first impression makes it seem like a perfect companion for Super Laser: The same kind of generic title, even greater a size (152 MB as opposed to 72 MB), both have been developed in China no matter how you consider Taiwan's legal status to be (either as part of the PR China or as the independent Republic of China), gorgeous high-resolution backdrops, a similar Raiden-esque weapon system and a similar feel overall.

The second phase should set in after approximately 10 minutes. This phase is decidedly less positive, being dominated by a combination of boredom and frustration. The music is repetitive, mostly cycling between average electronic music that would make a perfect match for any Counterstrike clan video and equally average heavy metal music, creating a stark contrast, harmonizing only in how forgettable it all is. Enemy design is equally repetitive with the same mechanical constructions appearing over and over again. The variety and progression in design found in Super Laser are sorely lacking here and to make matters worse, even if a new enemy kind is introduced it usually resembles earlier enemies nearly as much as a simple palette swap would.

Lightning Fighter is a very easy game, there's no two ways about it. Bosses employ lots of different bullet patterns inspired by many other games including danmakus, yet they still rarely cause you to break a sweat, especially due to the inability to turn of the auto-bombing. Even on hard, dieing is rarely an issue and not even using a continue has a serious impact on your score, as you keep al gems collected up to that point. Low difficulty doesn't necessarily spell doom for a shooter, but here the experience is further marred by the weapons never feeling like they pack enough of a punch. Bosses take an eternity to destroy and if you pick the wrong weapon, then even standard enemies can often leave the screen unharmed. Using the standard plane you can wait for weapon items to cycle between a blue laser vulcan gun, a green lock-on laser accompanied by a few straight laser shots and red missiles and lasers both flying straight ahead. The vulcan takes care of most popcorn enemies, but doesn't even leave a scratch on bigger ones. The missiles should by usual shooter conventions be the strongest of the bunch, enabling experienced players to take down anything that comes their way, but here they are painfully weak and thus a complete waste. This leaves the lock-on laser as the only halfway reliable weapon, dealing the most damage AND being the easiest to aim. Despite it still being easily possible to beat the game with any other weapon, it's not nearly as much fun when you desperately try to destroy something before it simply flies off.

A major nuisance is also the way items behave. Enemies often drop weapon-upgrades, bombs and point-giving gems, both subsequently flying around in circles before they eventually leave the screen. Unlike other games where items reach different parts of the screen, they always stay within very small fractions of the playing field in Lightning Fighter. Add in your measly weapons and you've got lots of situations where picking up items is too high a risk. Grabbing additional weapon upgrades when your weapon is already fully powered-up results in your special bar instantly filling up by 33% when it would otherwise slowly build up automatically. Once completely filled, touching it unleashes approximately five seconds of judgment day on your enemies. This comes highly appreciated in boss battles so you can get them over with more quickly, but since bosses rarely change position, items often become unobtainable just when you would want to nab them.

The third phase ends your time with Lightning Fighter on a more positive note. Later in the game the music gets better, with the stage music in stage 6 for example sounding like it could be lifted straight from Lords of Thunder and enemy design also picks up. Huge starfish shaped ships, a few metal-snakes and such spice things up. Scoring also becomes more interesting to make up for the otherwise low difficulty, despite the scoring system being overly simple or rather, non-existent. Just try to destroy or respectively pick up everything in sight and use as few bombs as possible all while carefully timing the use of your special attack. Repeated playthroughs for a better score every now and then provide some uncomplicated fun, although the game still never quite leaves the fields of mediocrity.

An update in August 2011 added two new planes for in-app purchase. I never felt compelled to spend any hard earned money on them and a preview function already displays what to expect of them, which isn't a whole lot. The only differences lie in the weapons, with the first plane offering a green laser vulcan spreader that of course is TOTALLY NOT like the blue laser vulcan spreader, blue lock-on missiles and a hard-hitting purple laser. The other new plane offers a hard-hitting yellow laser, an orange spreader and red lock-on fireballs. Even more than in Phoenix, the new planes in Lightning Fighter reek of being nothing more than a rip-off and quite a lazy one at that.

Ever heard of a game from Norway? Well, now you have, as Ultrablast's developer RetroFlux is located in said Northern European country, and it has delivered 41 MB worth of mostly unoriginal, but fairly well-designed and entertaining shooter fare.

Your craft always carries two weapons with it, that can be swapped between by tapping the screen with a second finger. Picking up another item of a weapon you are already equipped with upgrades it up to two times, while grabbing a new weapon will replace your current gun with it, thus allowing for a nice degree of customization. Most weapons just differ in standard shooter variables, like the vulcan having a higher rate of fire than others, and the napalm dishing out great amounts of splash damage. Some, on the other hand, offer additional merits, such as the white orbs, which fire extremely slow, making up for it by cancelling certain enemy attacks. Sometimes, enemies also drop "relics" which are stored on the lower right of the screen, and activated at a simple touch, granting you temporary benefits such as a shield that sends enemy shots bouncing back to sender.

Overall, though, Ultrablast is a fairly standard shooter with repetitive enemies and the attempt of drawing the player in with a story, while never truly going beyond the mere attempt. The heroine fights for humankind in a battle against fierce alien forces, eventually being drawn into a cosmic rift, where she is supposed to "fight her inner fears" embodying as the stage boss. This boss, though, turns out to be a rather unspectacular spider-thingy, ruining the dramatic chit-chat that lead to it, and the remainder of the story is about on the same level of polish.

Ultrablast still is a fun game, nonetheless, benefiting from flawless relative touch controls (virtual joystick and tilt can also be chosen), mostly tried and true and well-realised gameplay, and an occasionally exceptional presentation. The music, for example, combines piano sounds, violins and various electronic samples among others, creating highly varied tracks, each perfectly setting the mood of the current setting. This hold particularly true for the second stage (the aforementioned cosmic rift), which is also visually a sight to behold. It's safe to assume that the programmers aren't the best when it comes to pure graphical horsepower (possibly due to budget restrictions), but they managed to hide it in a wonderfully atmospheric trip through clouds shrouded in darkness, only lit up by your ship and enemy shots, bringing in hints of purple and red into the mix. Unfortunately, it's impossible to properly capture any of this in screenshots, but in motion, it works extremely well.