Game Review – Aleste

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COMPANY: AIKY & Square Enix
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Forward scrolling shooter
SIZE: 76 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 6/10

Aleste by is essentially a forward scrolling shooter game. There isn’t a background story given for the game – which is unusual.

The basic premise is that you control a flying craft or plane of some sort and shoot down as many alien and alien bosses as possible. There are a ton of things to shoot, avoid and of course to collect numerous powerups.

It’s reminiscent of past games like 1942 or Raiden of the last decade in look and feel. So its not the most original in concept and not implemented nearly as well as its predecessors.

Controls are easy to master since it has an auto-fire option. As you can guess pressing the fire button many time on a phone would be pretty annoying especially when there are so many things to shoot at.

Essentially you use the navi-key for forward and backwards and sideways. The center button or 0 can to used to turn auto fire on or off.

The game play is monotonous but perfectly adequate for an escape from the boredom of public transport.

The graphics are simple and reasonable but it does look old school compared to newer titles. Your space ship and enemies bar the bosses are too small.

There isn’t much sound to talk about only a relatively simple MIDI theme playing in the background.

OK soundtrack whilst playing but no fire of destruction sounds. It would be nice to hear your enemies being blown to bits. So based on this you definitely don’t need sound to play this game.

The levels in the game seem to go on forever and there is no discernible increase in difficulty. Even the bosses are easy to wipe out once you understand the games AI.

In fact Space Impact II on the Nokia phones is a better and more satisfying game.

Hints: Selecting the right powerup and subsequent compatible powerups are very important. That said it only takes one level to reach the max for a particular power so nothing to worry about.

Summary

We rate this game a 6/10.

Aleste is a perfect mindless shooter you can play on the train or anywhere else for that matter. However only if you truly have nothing better to do.

Buy only if you have small kids to keep entertained or the price is really low.