Another Chinese game, another attempt at cashing in on the doodle style fad. Ace Doodle Fighter admittedly gets the look right, although it's less "five minutes scribblings" and more colorful drawings. The Pacific ocean and dry plains you'll traverse are drawn on squared paper and scattered throughout you'll find islands, palm trees and mountains either cut out or ripped out of other pages and simply placed on the squared paper. Enemy airplanes, tanks and battleships share the same thick, white outlines, creating a cohesive impression of a three-dimensional world entirely made of two-dimensional paper cuts, similar to Paper Mario.

Gameplay-wise Ace Doodle Fighter offers more standard fare. Small formations of minor enemies and few bigger foes require loving from your standard vulcan gun that can be upgraded and either shoots focused bullet packs or spread bullets. Other items include health replenishers, shields, a powerful laser and additional smart bombs, which are triggered by pressing a button in the bottom right corner, sending in a big plane to carpet bomb the area and cancel all enemy bullets for a couple of seconds. You won't find anything here you haven't already seen in numerous comparable games, including end-of-stage bosses that unveil additional shootable turrets one after another, but there is nothing wrong with tried and true design as long as it's being done right and Ace Doodle Fighter does deliver good level design, enough enemy variety and just about anything a decent shooter needs, like reliable collision detection.

The one big flaw and the reason why the game is this low on the list meanwhile is the lack of proper controls. Ace Doodle Fighter offers no touch controls, only accelerometer controls. No matter how often I happen to stumble upon games like this, I don't get even a single step closer to understanding the reasoning behind this. With proper touch controls or at least virtual stick controls, the app could climb several spots, but as it is, while the motion controls aren't as much an obstacle as in some other games (see Magnetar), they are still responsible for many unnecessary hits. The lack of environmental hazards and the generally rather low difficulty at least render the game still playable and even enjoyable, but it could have easily been so much better.

Ace Fighter had been released before Ace Doodle Fighter, but I wouldn't call either one a sequel or prequel. Instead, both games are pretty much the same, with the most obvious difference being the graphics.

Ace Fighter opts for a more realistic look and while some people might appreciate that, it's not nearly as unique as ADF's style. Other than this, the music has a strong heroic style to it, akin to any patriotic military flick (think Top Gun), the laser shoots in fast, short bursts, rather than in a constant stream, your allied bomber flies by faster and the bosses are different.

From this list it should become clear just how similar both pieces of software really are, down to the generally serviceable gameplay marred by accelerometer controls. In the end it's only down to personal preferences in visual style which one you would possibly download.

Before developing Mortal Skies and its rehash Doodle Arcade Skies and before farming out their source code to other developers, Erwin Jansen had already released two shooters on the App Store. Or really just one shooter twice. ArcadeGuardian PRO and iGuardian appear to be the exact same game from their iTunes descriptions, so I asked Erwin directly what the differences are and he replied that both are "very similar" and that ArcadeGuardian PRO would just be shorter than iGuardian. When I then asked him why to keep both up for download and why not make their appearance less ambiguous, he replied...not at all anymore. Oh Erwin, when are you going to change your ways of releasing the same games numerous times?

iGuardian sounds an awful lot like the developer's later games (it's just lazy and also really weird to hear the same sound effects in all of his games, considering the graphical changes), but it looks much like an Amiga game. The extremely pixelated landscapes are similar to Cannon Fodder's toy soldier style and they certainly have a neat charm to them if you're into this kind of retro graphics. It's just too bad that enemies and the player's planes and chopper, while also being designed with retro-fans in mind, are drawn in a higher resolution with less clearly distinguishable pixels, somewhat clashing with the backdrops. It's not all that obvious during most heated moments, but it occasionally strikes the eye.

Gameplay-wise, iGuardian is content with constraining itself to the lowest common denominator. Using reliable touch controls you steer your craft through surprisingly well-guarded enemy territory, destroying tanks, ships, planes and other typical war toys, as well as killing commandos the size of a tank and equally sturdy. A few more creative hazards like Tesla towers also await, but enemies in general are a bit on the uninspired side of things, including bosses like a huge plane with turrets and engines waiting to be shot. Your standard machine gun can be minimally upgraded and the only other weapon you're ever going to get are homing missiles, coming in packs of ten.

iGuardian's main flaw would have to be the punch your weapons pack or rather the lack thereof. Even on the lowest possible difficulty setting (100 different settings are possible) and choosing the strongest vehicle it's impossible to defeat all or at least most enemies. Dodging the heaps and heaps of enemies and their constant rain of homing missiles can provide some quick fun, but it's ultimately annoying to keep on hitting a plane for seconds, only to have it fly off unscratched. Also, Erwin's lack of talent in properly designing a first boss hasn't begun in Mortal Skies. In iGuardian, the big plane waiting at the end of the first stage later during the fight begins opening three hatches that need to be shot. These, however, only open up one after another in succession and once two of them have already been dealt with, the third still opens as slowly as it has before, as if it was still waiting for the other two to do their part, forcing you to wait for about half a minute, unable to do anything in the meantime.

For once, the expression "looks just like Ikaruga" is fitting. Chinese developer C2Matrix (iStriker, HotField) took the color-switching mechanics, simplified them and put them in a DeathSmiles-esque gothic setting.

Enemies and their bullets come in two colors, blue and red. Your avatar (an angel) can change its color on the fly at any given time, which should be made use of frequently, as bullets the same color as your angel don't deal any damage. Instead, these bullets are absorbed to refill a bar at the bottom left, indicating both your health and your ammunition. Unlike Ikaruga or pretty much any shooter, you're not equipped with a rapid shot, but only homing shots that need to be actively triggered and come at the cost of one point of your energy bar. Your attacks aren't color-coded, so the color-switching has been reduced to a merely defensive manoeuver and there also is no specific order in which to take down enemies.

It all boils down to seeing a foe enter the screen, releasing a set of shots ASAP, and replenishing one or two points of energy. The developers apparently liked Ikaruga, but they haven't quite understood what made Treasure's work so special. While I'm personally not exactly its biggest fan, I can entirely see its appeal, founded in the combination of a game that can be tackled in vastly different ways. You are always given the choice between merely surviving and defeating enemies quickly, and building up combos and taking the risk of fighting differently-colored enemies. In Angel Rush none of that is intact, the once brain-twisting mechanics have been turned into little more than fan-service.

What's more, the developers haven't even tried rivalling Ikaruga's varied level design. Gone are any kinds of obstacles. Gone are destructible blocks and cannons. Gone are long-stretched vehicles and huge lasers. Throughout the whole game you keep facing the same ridiculously designed ghosts, simply upgraded with a couple of small ghosts - serving as options - attached to them as you progress. Backgrounds are only bland streams of lava and all boss fights are recurring battles against something resembling a leach, which while looking better than the standard ghosts, still doesn't break up the visual monotony.

Anybody able to look past the predominant simplicity, able to enjoy a laid back shooter might still get a kick out of Angel Rush for a while. The music is fittingly unsettling, reminding you of the Halloween movies during gameplay and switching to organ tunes after game over and on the title screen. Every now and then a skull passes by, dropping a fairy when taken down in time. If you manage to snag said fairy, you are given infinite energy for ten seconds, allowing you to unleash rage as you please. Sure, the game is already easy as it is, and becomes even easier this way, but it's still hard not to enjoy the absurd amount of shots your angel fires off during this short period of time. Finally, the controls work astonishingly well. Steering is mapped to the accelerometer, switching colors is done by swiping down and firing requires to swipe up. Usually, accelerometer controls in shooters are the worst idea to possibly come up with, but considering the constant need for additional inputs here, it's probably the only viable option, and given the lack of obstacles, the loss of a bit of precision isn't game-breaking by any means. Plus, swiping down and immediately flicking up again truly gives the illusion of actually attacking, where shooting in other games feels considerably less direct.