Air Attack HD is a fun shoot ’em up combat game reminiscent of Capcom’s classic 1942. Well executed and extremely fun to play, Air Attack HD is a great combat flyer experience in true retro arcade style.
Art in Games’ Air Attack HD lets you fly through the air firing constant ammo at the 58 enemy types featured in the highly detailed, totally engaging series of missions aimed at conquering the Nazis.
The game utilizes the iPad’s entire screen space, offers great special effects, and features one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard come to any game on a mobile device. The music feels momentous, crescendos when the game picks up in intensity, and always adds but never distracts to the game. Air Attack HD is well thought out and well worth the buck you’ll pay to get it.
As the controller of the protagonist plane in the game, it’s your job to navigate through the chaotic airspace, dropping bombs when and where you choose. You earn money when you pick up coins that result from bombing and destruction, and can also pick up health upgrades, additional shields, canon upgrades, and other rewards.
All the money you earn over the course of the game comes in handy in the game’s store, a hovering addition that allows you to take a pit stop every now and then and buy an extra life, side wing planes, lighting, cannons, auto rockets, bombs, turrets, shields, time warps, and other additions that add to your power and abilities in battle.
One cool feature about Air Attack HD is that when you lose a life, a new plane reappears instantly. You don’t have to take a break from the game and start over. Instead, the experience is uninterrupted as one plane is replaced by another. If you lose all your lives the game takes you back to your most recent checkpoint with the same amount of money you had when you got there. This is a perfect compromise, making it inconvenient but not endlessly devastating to the gameplay when you die.
Air Attack HD ends after the completion of eight levels that all feel varied enough to keep it interesting. The winning screen encourages you to complete the missions again on a more difficult setting, but when I did that it felt like I had just reached the end of a favorite book. I’m not sure I’d keep playing the game over and over again and so I now feel a tinge of a void.
Bottom Line: Air Attack HD is an extremely polished, well executed shoot ’em up game with fluid gameplay. I only wish you could pay more money for more levels.
