IronPlane HD

You have to hope that should aliens deem Earth and its crumbling economy worthy of attack, our armies could muster up more than a single weedy plane to man our defences.

SwanAngel, the developer behind insipid shmup effort IronPlane HD, clearly disagrees.

Heck, it’s even willing to put humanity's future in the hands of an intergalactic fighter that can't change direction while firing.

IronPlane HD commits a multitude of gaming sins, but the most obvious is failing the 'first impressions' litmus test.

Once you've recovered from the decidedly uninspiring menu screen (a Times New Roman-style font hardly screams futuristic action), the scrolling backstory's pigeon English continues to drain your enthusiasm.

Then the vertical-scrolling action begins, as the first of the snail-paced enemy ships gently meander towards you. It's a good job they’re so sluggish, though, since you'll soon discover that your own vessel moves about as hastily as a tortoise with a brick strapped to its shell.

Movement is handled by a virtual pad and four-button system (fire, attack, boost, and - excitingly - pause) that looks as ugly as it performs.

Thanks to an agonising lack of multi-touch, you have to pick a direction to fly in and then fire off your wimpy, yet gradually upgradeable, guns separately. Most of the time, you'll end up strafing in the wrong direction, and be too busy firing to turn back.

You can come to a complete stop by tapping the centre of the D-pad, but this feels unnatural and is easy to forget when the action gets more hectic - which it does, eventually.

Alternative accelerometer controls are available, yet the crawling movement of the ship means you end up flinging the screen from side to side, making accurate aiming ridiculously tricky in the process.

In fairness, if you play for longer than the 15 minutes needed to ask for an Android Market refund, IronPlane HD does improve. Albeit, only slightly.

Different stages have their own themes (space, land, sky, sea, a bit more space), and there are occasional surprises to keep you on your toes: boss ships to soak up bullets and a meteor shower to weave a clumsy path between.

Enemies get bigger, faster, and more organised, too, so the steady trickle of weapons and ship upgrades found floating across the levels prove essential pick-ups.

However, the real problem with IronPlane HD lies in that it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done or seen before - and better - in the last 30 years of arcade shooters.

So, unless painfully slow blasting action is your thing, leave this one on the launch pad.