Meteor Blitz

Much as we yearn for fresh, exclusive gaming content on Android, bringing over long-forgotten (by the mainstream, at least) iPhone gems has a certain appeal.

Take Galcon, for example. I’d never played the game until I came to review it on the Android platform, so I’m extremely glad of its conversion.

Meteor Blitz fits into this same category. Not that it plays anything like Galcon - aside from the interstellar warfare theme, the two couldn’t be more different.

Meteor Blitz is a twin-stick shooter – that is, you steer your little fighter through 360 degrees of motion with one virtual analogue stick and shoot in multiple directions with another. Using this mechanism you must blast through loads of floating space rocks and hostile forces.

There’s also a neat gravity beam that lets you pick up rocks and enemies and fire them back like a missile.

Where Meteor Blitz really stands apart from many similar games (though there aren’t many on Android anyway), is that you have a single extremely limited fuel bar that powers both your motion and your weapons. Once you’ve run out, you’re a sitting duck until you release the controls, at which point the bar quickly recharges.

This gives play a completely different feel to most other shooters. You move in bursts, taking breathers in the small pockets of respite you manage to work for yourself (often after a shake-activated smart bomb attack).

And 'work' is the operative word. Meteor Blitz isn’t as easy to just pick up and play as most shooters, and adapting to its unique demands is a relatively protracted process.

This does mark it out as something of an awkward, hardcore experience. Not everyone will have the patience or inclination to stick with it, and the lack of a persistent currency (which allows for weapon upgrades) after the Game Over screen will frustrate those used to seeing everything a game has to offer with little work.