AstroWings doesn't exist on iTunes anymore and neither does its Korean developer Livezen for whatever reason. This has already happened to few other developers of iOS apps, the strange thing in this case is that AstroWings has since received a sequel dubbed AstroWings Returns (how original) by another Korean publisher named Play Bean. Whatever the story behind all of this, the fact remains that the original AstroWings is gone and probably nobody is going to miss it, being the mediocre game it was.

The action comprises of nine stages spread over different planets, albeit all sharing the same drabness and blandness both in their backgrounds and the enemies inhabiting them. Thanks to the flawless relative touch controls, AstroWings is perfectly playable, but one simply can't shake the feeling that you're wasting time better spent on better games. Samey enemies release relatively high amounts of bullets, which move rather slowly, and you're further protected by a shield that sustains a considerable amount of punishment before breaking. Some people complain about the first stage being too hard. A notion I can't really understand, whereas I feel like anybody who's played at least a couple of shooters before should easily make it through to the second stage on his first try. Something I do agree with, however, is that the game from stage 2 onwards loses even more of its difficulty, as you should have already earned enough credits to upgrade the blade weapon by two levels, enabling you to breeze through any enemy formation.

A major flaw lies in how much damage the frequently appearing (hardly discernible) mini-bosses and the main bosses can take before finally going down. The player tries his best not to fall asleep while dodging the same patterns again and again, and in the time it takes to finish the battle, he realizes the dodgy boss hit boxes, which don't span the whole breadth of the opponent's sprites. This leads to many a hit seemingly connect with an enemy, only to see them remaining unscratched. You are able to switch between four weapons, although most of them are kind of pointless. The vulcan gun is too weak, the Raiden-esque bending laser usually prefers targeting the infinitely respawning popcorn enemies instead of the (mini-)bosses, the standard laser is too slim to properly aim, so what remains is the incredibly strong and broad blade gun. Additional items such as bombs can also be purchased in the shop, but there's simply no need for that. Any money should go into upgrading the blade gun and voilà, all trouble's are gone.

AstroWings returns in the form of AstroWings Returns (Ha-ha!), and according to the credits section, it has in fact been developed by the same studio as the original game (Livezen). The guys behind it, however, appear to have been rather lazy since their last release, as AWR often feels like less of a sequel and more of a re-release. The tutorial screen, the menus, the upgrade shop, the four weapons, the backgrounds, the idea of nine stages spread over our nine planets (Pluto is still in there), the controls, enemy designs...most of what you'll see here will be recognizable to anyone who's played the original AW before.

Since said original isn't available anymore, though, this overabundant recycling shouldn't be an issue to most people. More important is that Livezen has been addressing a number of complaints people were raising towards the first game. The infinitely respawning pop-corn enemies guarding (mini-)bosses for example have been removed, and the different weapons now all serve a purpose in certain situations, like when the laser can break through a boss' rotating shield or when the blade gun destroys enemy missiles. Also, the difficulty can now be set to four different levels, while the enemy attacks have become fancier and more varied, often crossing the border to danmaku county.

Despite offering four difficulty levels, AWR suffers from a huge problem with the challenge provided. It's not necessarily so much of a challenge to your shooter skills, but more a challenge of bearing with the game and its love for grinding. This time around, the first stage really IS already hard to beat, and it seems like the game wasn't meant to be played relying on your skills alone. Purchasing upgrades in the item shop is at least equally crucial, which is unfortunate, since items have now become more expensive, encouraging the exchange of real money for the in-game currency. And there we have it: Maybe the new publisher is to blame, but whatever the reason, AWR has been designed with sucking more money out of the player in mind, either for in-game credits or for a depletable recovery item, which basically serves as an extra life and hence as a standard element pretty much every other shooter offers for free. AWR is a neat little shooter once your arsenal has become powerful enough, and it is undeniably possible to reach this point without spending any money on in-app purchases, but it takes too much grinding to eventually get there.

Aerial Assault is a fairly generic, old-school shooter much like Sky Thunder. You steer a ship through eight stages, shooting turrets, flying crafts and ships, while utilizing perfectly functional relative touch controls. At the end of each stage awaits a huge boss, a tap in the lower right corner of the screen triggers a smart bomb, pickups strengthen your weapon, and the scoring system only consists of downing enemies and picking up Strikers 1945-esque shiny gold bars left behind by ground targets. So far so "let's stick to the rulebook as close as possible", and the presentation further follows this line. The cheesy rock music wonderfully fits the action. The visuals – while slightly cheap-looking – have charming 16-bit aesthetics to them. The way your fire looks and how its impact on enemies is presented actually feels strangely compelling. It's hard to put into words, or even to fully understand what it is about it, but Aerial Assault simply is one of those games, where blasting things just feels great.

Defeating enemies fills up a bar at the bottom, indicating how strong a secondary laser you can currently activate. After a couple of seconds of wreaking havoc among enemies, it's back to your standard gun again and the bar needs to be refilled again for another strike. While this is at least a tad more off-beat than the rest of the game, it also further goes to show that the guys at Gamevibe Studios might have played Psykio's Strikers 1945 series at some point.

Aerial Assault could be a fine little shooter and it actually is for a few minutes, but then it's all brought down by a handful of flaws that shouldn't have been too difficult to avoid. The lack of enemy variety isn't all that game-breaking, as the action remains intense enough to cover it, but the bosses could seriously have used some more ingenuity. They all fire the same small red bullets (Psykio again?), not a single one dares going beyond that with, say, a laser, or mines, or pop-corn enemies guarding him. An even bigger bummer, though, would have to be the extreme brevity of all stages. You wouldn't believe how fast some of them go by, taking maybe about half a minute to reach the boss (which usually also goes down quickly). Worst of all, however, is the nose-dive the framerate takes in the later stages. Despite the amount of bullets and enemies onscreen never even coming close to some of the more technical impressive iOS shooters, the game starts lagging badly, making survival harder than it should be.

AsciiArt Wars is the product of a single Japanese guy and it shows. Both. It's both distinctively Japanese and simple.

As the title already gives away, the big draw is supposed to be the AsciiArt involved, so it's a bit underwhelming to see it only being employed for the enemies. They are various animals, planes and so on consisting of nothing more than what the 95 letters and symbols large pool of the Ascii standard has to offer. This is all good in theory, but there are a lot of omissions of arguably better Ascii art the developer could have included, with especially the boss (a big puppy) falling short in comparison to other stuff freely available on the web. The standard enemies at least offer enough variation to be interesting for one or two playthroughs. Nothing else in the game is done in Ascii art, however. The player craft is a generic plane, shots are your typical flashing bullets, power-ups are spheres, the background appears to be hand-drawn (and looks pretty nice in fact) and point items at least are a letter not part of the Ascii standard: 点 . In Chinese this is pronounced "dian" and in Japanese it's "ten", meaning point in both languages. Despite the visual style being inconsistent to no end, it still manages to come together rather well and to remind one of Touhou shooters thanks to the encircled pentagram always present, cherry blossoms taking turns with a huge red moon and a foggy night in the background.

The similarities don't end there, though. Enemy patterns and especially the boss of the single stage tend to flood the screen in brightly illuminated spheres just like Team Shanghai Alice is known to do. The path to the boss only takes roughly a minute and while the shooting mostly feels well, one can't help but to think it's too short and it is sometimes hard to tell whether your shots connect. Just like in the graphics department, the gameplay is good enough for one or two playthroughs and that's pretty much it. The boss at least manages to be more interesting...after its first attack phase. In the beginning the puppy rapidly closes in on the player, trying to hit him directly, while simultaneously shooting. It's extremely frustrating especially given how hard it is to recognize the boss's hit box. You're best advised to just bomb the shit out of him to see his other two attack phases where the puppy stays at the top of the screen and pumps out bullet curtains and bullet pentacles like if it's struck by raving madness. It's definitely a neat test of reflexes as opposed to the rest of the game.

The whole experience is pretty average and it's already done with in 2-3 minutes, so why even bother? For starters, it's free. Yay. And second it's only weighing in at 0.7 MB, which means you can even download it over your 3G connection in a breeze while waiting for the bus. Plus, probably in order to save precious memory space, there is no music included, but the game instead streams a random song from your library every time you start and it switches to a different one during the boss fight. This can make for some hilarious results. Like when I played it for the very first time I thought how amazing it is for the game to feature music from the Gorillaz. Then I realized it was merely using MY music, but it all felt so fitting, I thought it must have some sort of intelligent selection algorithm built in, possibly checking for the BPM or something. The best example of this was for me when during the boss fight Killer 7's Rave On began to play and I can't even possibly think of any other song on my iPhone that would suit a shooter boss better than that. The next time through, however, my theory was crushed like the original Terminator. Not by a hydraulic press, but by this. It is well worth downloading AsciiArt Wars just to experience results like this all while nearing the second and third boss phase which happen to add some worthwhile gameplay.