Ubisoft's mobile gaming sub-division Gameloft already made a foray into the realms of iOS shooting as early as 2009. Unlike Taito's equally early attempt with Space Invaders Infinity Gene, however, Siberian Strike hasn't held up nearly as gracefully, having hit the depths of mediocrity by now.

The story is as ham fistedly constructed as possible, desperately aping Westwood's Red Alert series. The black-and-white news-style introduction video depicts an alternate history line deviating from the real one right after the end of WW II. Stalin is dead, but that doesn't stop the supposedly evil Soviet Union from preparing the ultimate evil scheme for world domination: Stalinbot(!) - a genetic crossbreed between Stalin and the future(!!) Mir space station(!!!) - runs the Stalinka vodka factory planning to corrupt the honest workers of all free nations. Your mileage may vary, but it's really nowhere near as funny as it'd like to be, and within the game, the story is being developed through boring chit-chat between ugly anime-style portrait pictures.

Gameplay and visual design are rather reminiscent of (the later released) 1942 First Strike. You are taken through realistic (post-)WW II scenarios like the arctic sea, battling everything the war industry of the 1940s had to offer ranging from planes over ships to tanks and planes. And planes are also featured pretty prominently. In all seriousness, enemy design could have used a bit more imagination, especially given that 1942 First Strikes offers some seriously fancy stuff in comparison, like laser turrets and airships. Pickups are also highly standard-y, as you grab temporary wingmen, spreader shots, smart bombs and medals (100 for an extra life).

Just like in the Capcom game, the playing field is too broad for the screen, forcing it too scroll left and right as you approach the sides. While this worked well enough in the former, here it leads to more frustrating situations, due to objects (including your plane) generally being bigger, and the scrolling being more sensitive. Also, enemies tend to appear on the sides, staying out of sight until you decide to sway over, only to be surprised by their existence and possibly ramming right into them or one of their many shots if you're not careful.

The only two decently innovative (or better yet: less common) elements to the game are a powerful, alas too cumbersome charge-shot that can be activated at any time (think R-Type) and a handful of three-dimensional stages that have you weaving through somewhat narrow passages, occasionally taking down targets with precise single shots. These stages are comparable to the ones found in Gradius III, although they're at least better constructed here, thanks to the lower difficulty and the need to not only move left and right, but also dive below obstacles hanging down from above.

Siberian Strike is a prime example of cookie cutter design. It does little to differentiate itself from any established standards and even within these standards, it is content with staying one of the more conservative representatives of its genre. If you can live with the slightly hectic scrolling of the the screen to the left and right, it's still nothing you would go awfully wrong with. The direct touch controls work well and blasting enemies has a neat satisfying feel to it...if only Gameloft wasn't currently charging $5 for it. There is absolutely nothing here in store justifying this price tag, but if it should ever become free again, you could do a lot worse.

Made-in-China Sky Thunder is possibly the very first vertical shooter released on the iPhone and while it's still playable by all means, it has long lost ground in an ever-growing competition. On the bright side, we have a lite version that has been updated to contain the entire game, only slightly marred by an ad bar at the bottom of the screen, fifteen seconds of waiting in-between stages and the lack of a save feature.

Sky Thunder feels like a long-lost Psykio cellphone shooter with its mostly realistic war scenario, the occasional glimpse into future technology, the amount of bullets being somewhere in-between classic shooters and more recent danmaku-type shooters, and the very similar bullet appearance. The six stages nicely vary in design as you start out over a lush South American jungle with barely visible pyramids strewn throughout, continue across an ocean complete with steep cliffs and finally enter enemy skies, blowing up turrets. Not only do the backgrounds boast a healthy amount of little details, they are also nicely, if only slightly, animated, as clouds fly by and submarines open their hatches, for example.

Just like in Strikers 1945 and other Psykio shooters, the gameplay is fairly basic. At the beginning of the game you choose between the spreader-style fire plane and the more straight-forward ice plane. During missions, standard weapon upgrades can be picked up and bombs can be launched, instantly cancelling all enemy bullets and also hopefully taking down a considerable amount of foes. Scoring is as simple as picking up floating coins and defeating as much of the opposition as possible.

So why does it feel like a long-lost Psykio CELLPHONE shooter? This is where the controls come into play, since your craft doesn't smoothly follow your inputs, but is constrained to jumping from position to position. There are hundreds of spots the plane can be in and you usually won't even notice there is something amiss, but as soon as you need to squeeze your big-ass hitbox through a small gap in the bullet patterns (Psykio all the way, again), you'll likely wish for precise, true analogue controls. Also reminiscent of cellphone shooters (or MSX shooters) is the stuttering scrolling of the scenery, hurting the eye until you've accustomed yourself to it.

Another unfortunate shortcoming has more in common with Gradius: Dieing leaves you severely underpowered, and getting back on your feet can prove frustrating unless you either bomb your way through or are lucky enough to die in an area where enemies are more generous with power-ups. Otherwise, though, Sky Thunder is among the easier shooters, coming off as pretty relaxing with a fully upgraded arsenal and a maxed-out bomb stock. Sky Thunder is a mediocre shooter, taking into consideration all of its positive and negative assets. So anybody longing for a Psykio shooter on his iPhone might want to check out the free version.

For every 100 or so WWII games, there is one title set in WWI, it seems, and this is the one iOS shooter that doesn't focus on evil Nazi-Germany, but on evil empire-Germany, yay. To be honest, though, it doesn't make much of a difference. With all those tanks, planes, sentry turrets, flak cannons, airships, crazy blends of old war technology with sci-fi machinery, and bombed out houses amidst lush fields of grass and creeks, Richard Wilson could as well have called it SkySmash 1945, without having anybody complain.

The one strong point SkySmash 1918 has going for it, is its name...ok, sorry for that. No, the name is horrible and generic at the same time - which might be considered commendable in a way. The real strong point is the visual design. Just looking at the game makes it hard to believe only two guys were responsible for the programming and the art (with another one supporting them with the sound and music), it looks that great. The backdrops are extremely detailed, up to the point where you can't even fully enjoy them all while simultaneously focusing on the action. Tanks leave behind trails, buildings cast realistic shadows, bosses are smoothly animated, and the surroundings simply feel organic thanks to the crazy attention to detail.

Maybe the developers should have settled with a virtual model railroad simulator instead of a full-fletched game, though. Despite the controls offering every major option of the genre (tilt / relative touch / direct touch) and working well, SkySmash 1918 still appears to have been designed with the intention to annoy and frustrate the player. For starters, this is one of those shooters where you need to destroy a certain percentage of enemies per stage to advance, but enemies tend to withstand way too much damage on medium and hard difficulty settings, and even on easy some of them do, plus, some block your way to them with a constant stream of bullets, all of which makes it annoying to end a stage only to find yourself forced to repeat it.

What's more, some enemy shots cancel yours. Flak cannons and planes for example can relatively safely hide behind their blue or red homing shots, respectively. This would already be aggravating in most other games of the genre, but when having to meet a certain quota of downed enemies, it's simply inexcusable the way it has been executed. Another big bummer is how enemies can still attack you from behind, even if they've already been safely passed by. Given how borderline impossible it is to defeat each and every foe, you will most likely at some point find yourself being caught up by a bullet from behind, fired off by a flak cannon or a tank that is not even visible anymore.

At least on the easy setting, SkySmash 1918 is playable and it might even be worth a look due to its visual beauty, but the shortcomings overall are too big to make it truly recommendable in such a crowded genre.

Chinese mini-development "Shoot it" keeps its aims low and doesn't beat around the bush with its straightforward title. In both gameplay modes – Logo and Ball – it is your sole goal to "shoot it", be it a logo or a ball, and repeat it ad nauseam. Using effective direct touch controls you line up your ship with AskCloud-logos (not to be mistaken for THIS) or colored balls and raise your score until a single crash ends your current run, setting the score back to zero. Don't expect any items to break up the monotony, at least you are given three smart bombs per game. In Logo mode this allegedly triggers a giant fireball, although it looks more like a huge slice of fat ham, and in Ball mode a swarm of swords flies in from behind.

Logo Mode offers no variety whatsoever, it's sometimes overwhelming due to logos suddenly popping up from behind or from the sides, and the ambient music heavy on flutes is plain strange and feels completely out of place. Ball mode on the other hand fares quite a bit better. Not only do big bombs splitting up into three smaller ones upon detonation, and various balls (e.g. soccer balls and baseballs) offer some much-needed visual and gameplay diversity, this mode is also entirely fair and actually pretty relaxing. Sway left and right, fire swords at mostly harmless balls, watch out for the occasional bombs and let your mind soar. The music relying mostly on smooth guitar sounds and whistling perfectly complements this feeling, making Shoot it an unambitious and cheaply produced, yet adequately compelling cool-down game when lying in bed after a long day.

Oh, and it's also the perfect game for anyone desperately trying to rank high in some game's GameCenter high score lists: Currently, there are only 40 people registered in the online lists, despite the game having been available for a few months now already.