Overview
From the iTunes' page: "Become the captain of the stars in this 3D arcade style space shooter. Dodge asteroids, watch out for proximity mines, and battle a never ending stream of enemy ships bent on your destruction."
Gameplay
When it comes to the Menu, StarSmasher is not the most aesthetically pleasing application we've come across. A signal to us, that would be verified upon delving deeper into the app, that this game was lacking.
The game starts up with a very simple image with text that reads, "Loading". When that's over, it changes to the word "Start". You have one option to tweak, and that's in the very top on the left side, a little bit of text that reads, "Sound Effects On", and clicking it, you can turn the sound effects off. This is the only option, other than tapping to start the game. When you click on that, a black screen reads plainly, "Loading. Tap to fire. Tilt to Control." Nothing else.
Now let's talk about the actual game, which begins after a painfully long encounter with the dark, depressing, painful-to-watch loading screen. When the game starts, you aren't really told what to do, but it's pretty obvious. You fly through space, and use the accelerometer to tilt your iPhone around to make your ship go up, down, left and right.
There are many asteroids flying around that you must navigate around. This is difficult due to the vast number of these asteroids combined with the horrible controls that are nowhere near as sensitive as they should be.
In a lot of games, you experience controls that are too sensitive. With StarSmasher, however, it's totally the opposite. You turn your iPhone all the way to its side, and you barely turn.
To shoot, you tap the screen, and whichever direction your aiming box is pointed, well, that's where you'll shoot. Your can shoot ships right in front of you, as well as other obstacles such as mines.
You can also pick up shield-boost items along the way, which enhance your ship's shields and protect you from hits by 25%.
Also, it also seems like you always get hit, even if you're totally clear of the asteroids, mines, and anything else. This can get very frustrating, as you just wish that the game would work like it should! There doesn't seem to be a real point or purpose as to what you're fighting for, as StarSmasher lacks any semblance of a storyline. As a simple avoid-the-asteroids-and-shoot game, this could be forgiven, but as StarSmasher doesn't even accomplish this end effectively, we were hoping the developer could at least muster up a little something new.
Review
All in all, there is not much complexity found in this game, not much to explore, and, along with bad controls and bad graphics, it's an utter mess of a paid app. This game tries so hard to bring back the old 3D retro starship games games, but it just seems like you're playing a really bad rip-off in a really old arcade, wishing you could just shoot where you keep trying to shoot. Hopefully though, they will work on this app, and improve its quality.
Once you play other games in the app store that surpass StarSmasher, you see how much better it could have been, how much more fun it could have been. Better controls, graphics, sounds, menus, options and more are all possible, and I'm sure that eventually we'll get a good starship arcade style game for the iPhone, but don't count on this one to be that game.
Summary
Once you realize that the original arcade versions of this type of game were better, you might think twice about leaving it on your iPhone, or recommending it to friends. Great idea for a game, but poor execution.
