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Silpheed Alternative: Menace from Beyond the Stars

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Silpheed Alternative: Menace from Beyond the Stars

The ‘Alternative’ in the title above is presumably a reference to the fact that this game is – bar the space setting and the titular angular-shaped vessel – almost nothing like the Silpheed titles of consoles past.

The Android exclusive isn’t an isometric bullet-hell shmup like the Sega CD original, with endless waves of enemies to decimate and power-ups worth zipping across the crowded screen to collect.

Instead, Slipheed Alternative: Menace from Beyond the Stars (to give it its bonkers full title) is a by-the-numbers space dogfighter that ticks the genre conventions off with aplomb, but never really sets the Galaxy on Fire.

Elite forces

In fairness, the basic Silpheed premise remains the same – dwindling human armies fight a last stand against powerful unknown enemies in a far flung corner of the galaxy – but the execution is more Freespace than Raiden.

Silpheed Alternative is a 3D shooter in which you control one of the titular space craft (flying in the centre of the screen) throughout a series of increasingly tough battles with enemy fighters out to destroy your fleet.

The sharp ship design and use of intersecting, glowing lines to help you navigate (as well as looking suitably flashy) ensure the game gives a dazzling first impression with a mostly rock solid framerate to boot.

It’s no Galaxy on Fire THD, but a reasonable alternative for non-Tegra 2 devices.

The looping J-rock soundtrack will likely get dialled back pretty sharpish, though, as well as the overly peppy voices of your fellow pilots – who, in true Eastern gaming style, always sound like excited teenagers going to a skateboarding tournament.

Fire and forget

Although you can use tilt controls to navigate the ship, the frantic action means you’ll quickly switch to the more reliable virtual joystick for performing daring flying feats. The aiming never feels particularly accurate, though, meaning the laser cannon is pretty redundant unless you’re up close and personal.

Instead, the neighbouring missile button will get the biggest workout. Using a Rez-style lock-on system, you hold ‘fire’, paint as many targets as your weapon allows, then unleash a rain of guided missile death on enemy fighters.

While all weapons are upgradeable between missions, it’s easy to max out your arsenal pretty quickly – turning the game into a bit of a turkey shoot in the process.

Standard baddies will explode after one shot, but the vast battleships that soon appear soak up dozens of missiles before they finally explode, nuclear bomb-style.

The 100 minute war

While the combat is pretty scintillating, where Slipheed slips-up is its brevity.

On Normal, you can rattle through the brief seven missions in well under two hours. Yes, you can go back and try them out at harder difficulties, but with no online multiplayer or even leaderboards the incentive is pretty small.

With missions involving no more than taking out the biggest ships heading your way, it’s clear the developers ran out of ideas pretty fast as the thin story winds up just when you’re getting comfortable in the cockpit.

Slipheed Alternative is a competent, attractive dogfighter, but it needs some extra content to become a real space odyssey.

Silpheed Alternative: Menace from Beyond the Stars

Ship design aside, this is more spiritual successor to the original Slipheed that ditches scrolling shooting in favour of generic space combat that’s slick but over way too fast
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Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo