Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is an frantic shoot n’ run game in the vein of the classic arcade games Contra and Metal Slug. Glitchsoft brings back the old vibe but with some baggage of the 21st Century.
Story: 4/5
The game starts off with a short intro that explains why you are on the ship and that you must escape. To do that you must fight through hordes of alien invaders. The story is obviously not the strong suit of the game, but do you really need a good reason to kick some alien ass?
Controls: 4/5
Controls are a tricky thing to master in all iOS games and as a result the games sucess really depends on how well these are implemented. You are given an eight direction D-Pad on the right side of the screen and a slider bar on the left side. The slider bar allows you to move right, left and to duck. The jump button is located next to the D-Pad which could be a problem if not for the floaty phsyics. Since the game is set on a space ship, your jumps take an abnormally long time to pull off which allows you fire at enemies below or at high up explosives with relative ease. The controls in general are decent and allow you to control Arc(your character) fairly well.
Graphics: 5/5
The graphics are very retro and suit the game perfectly. They definitely harken back to the old arcade cabinent days and are very well defined on the screen despite the lack of retina display integration. On the iPad the game is very blurry in 2x mode so your best bet is to wait for Universal to be added in an update. They plan on doing this if the game really takes off.
iAP: 2/5
The iAP level is on a scale of how obtursive they are in relation to the game experience. Unfortuantely for this modern interperation of Contra it is crippled by its rather in-your-face iAP. In Contra you could use the Konami code to get 30 extra lives while in this game you can pay for them. Also availble for in app purchase are health packs for when your health gets low, and wings for when you fall into the abyss by accident. If you dont have these items you have to restart the whole level which makes this game quite the grind fest if you dont pony up the cash. You can also pay for these items using gems, the currency you can get from playing the game. (You can also buy packs of gems) Also dependant on these gems are weapon purchases and upgrades. So if you suck at the game you are going to go through tons of gems buying extra revives and new weapons to tackle the fast enemies/strong bosses.
Overall: 4/5
Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is certainly a worthwhile investement if you loved all those classic arcade games or are just hankering for a good shooter. Though the iAP hamper the immersion factor of the game they are not ultimately necessary to complete the game. At the price of two Big Macs you dont want to miss this.
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