App Review: All my Enemies [Video]

Scrolling shooters have come a long way since they first hit the arcade nearly thirty years ago and each generation brings more; more power-ups, more enemies and more complexity. You’d think that this type of game would have reached its peak of innovation long ago but somehow it keeps moving forward, although there hasn’t been a great deal since the amazing Ikaruga appeared a decade ago.

All my Enemies is a vertical shooter released in 2011, standards are high for scrolling shooter and there’s a level of polish expected for even mobile games. Sadly although All my Enemies is a competent shooter it’s missing the pizazz that you’d expect for a game at this price point.

There are six planets each with a boss at the end and each of these planets is separated by a space level, so length isn’t much of a problem as it’ll take roughly half an hour to get through the game but there’s no way of pausing the game once you begin and even worse there’s no way to come back to a level at the point you left. If you plan on playing All my Enemies you better be sure you have 30 minutes of uninterrupted time where you won’t be getting any calls or else you’ll be staring back over from the beginning and you’ll get way too familiar with the opening two levels, which is a shame as some of the level designs towards the end of the game get quite interesting. One nice feature here though is the option to choose whether you want to restart the entire level each time you die, or continue from the same point at the added cost of losing your weapon upgrades each time you complete a level.

The game description boasts nine different weapon upgrades but while these are powerful, they are terribly exciting and they are all just upgrades along the same path, so you won’t be switching to homing weapons, lasers or any other upgrades by grabbing a power up. The upgrades themselves just focus around adding more bullets, either by increasing rate of fire and then adding more guns, at the easier levels you’ll be killing enemy ships before they even enter the screen. There’s also power-ups such as shield that’ll protect you from a single hit, that can make the brutal checkpoint-less mode a little less tough.

The action doesn’t have a lot of speed, this can be explained away by the fact that the ship has to be controlled by either the touch screen or accelerometer and these don’t offer the same precision that you’d need if you were playing a bullet hell style shooter, but the pace and emptiness of the screen brings in a lot of tedium to the action and you’ll be that more glad to reach a new planet and see a new type of foe.

All my Enemies isn’t a terrible vertical shooter, but it definitely won’t amaze you in any way, feel free to check out the lite version that contains the first few levels and see for yourself, as if you purchase the full game you could be seeing a lot of them.

When you’re ready, head over to the Android Market and download this game by clicking or scanning the QR Code below.

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