Deep Space Rescue

In space, no one can hear your scream. Too bad you're not in space because you're sure to be crying out in shock at this abysmal excuse for a first-person shooter.

Deep Space Rescue starts off well enough, sending you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy to pursue a missing scout. Having gone silent months earlier, the scout's spaceship has been tracked to an alien installation. Your job is to find the scout and bring him back to Earth alive.

The aliens manning the space station have something to say about your rescue efforts, naturally, and completing the mission means getting past extraterrestrial enemies, grabbing the scout and hightailing it home. Unfortunately, you're more likely to hit the Home key on your device than to finish the task at hand.

Poor controls have something to do with the game's failure. Movement breaks down into an odd array of inputs including a D-pad for adjusting the camera set counter-intuitively in the lower-right corner, up and down arrows in the opposite corner for walking, and strafe arrows at the top of the screen. As if it wasn't confusing enough, tilting your handset moves the camera, too.

Mindless foes balance out the imprecise controls. Bland levels ensure you can't get lost when the camera goes wonky due to an unintentional tip of your handset. Boring objectives guarantee all of your energy can be directed to fumbling with the controls.

Even if you manage to adjust to the controls, Deep Space Rescue has other problems that discourage replay. The game doesn't save your progress when exiting, because it's only three missions long. You can finish the entire game in literally ten minutes. One mission doesn't even feature any combat.

Amazingly, these three missions are riddled with bugs, including a final boss battle in which the alien just stands still, letting you fill her up with bullets. Objects frequently rest in walls. It's even possible to get stuck in a wall yourself, at which point you have to ask: who exactly needs rescuing?