Review- Sky Force Reloaded

At the start of the summer there was a deal for three months of X-box’s Game Pass for $1. I jumped on that because why not? It would give me and my son a chance to try some games for essentially free during the summer when he’s home from school. Overall, we’re tried a handful of games once and then moved on. But one we played a lot was Sky Force Reloaded.

This is a great little scrolling shooter. You control an advanced fighter attacking waves of enemies while trying to rescue some humans. You’ll face waves of enemy planes, tanks shooting cannons at you, missile firing helicopters, turrets filling the screen with bullets and over the top boss vehicles.

There are multiple levels and each level has three difficulties. To unlock the next difficulty level you need to complete the previous level, earning all four achievements; Kill 70% of enemies, Kill 100% of enemies, Rescue all Humans, Win Untouched (ie taking no damage). The first one is easy. Rescuing all Humans is normally pretty achievable (Side note, I keep wanting to call this game Star Force, and I think it’s because you’re rescuing Humans. Not people. Humans. But nothing else in the game feels space themed).

Getting 100% really requires both players working together as sometimes there are streams of enemies planes flying across both sides of the screen. Being untouched can be a nightmare. Some of the bosses are hard enough to just defeat, not taking any damage while doing it is an extra challenge. On the Insane difficulty, some of the enemies fire so fast that if you’re not on top of it, the screen will become saturated with weapon fire, making it impossible not to get hit.

As you play you’ll earn stars which you can then spend to upgrade your ship. These upgrades make a world of difference. Missions go from being almost impossible to a comparable piece of cake with a couple upgrades. How quickly you can kill something determines a lot of the difficulty. Unfortunately, you can max out these upgrades and then it’s all about your skill.

As you play, you will also collect random ship parts and cards. Ship parts unlock different ships you can fly, each with special abilities. One, the Ambulance, rescues Humans faster and has a very wide firing arc. Another, the Swift, maneuvers faster making it easier to avoid fire, but has half the health of the others. Each ship has a different role to play.

Cards provide either temporary boosts to things like Star drops, firing rate, chance for more cards to drop, etc, or permanent bonuses. These permanent cards have almost as much impact on the game as ship upgrades. There are upgrades that increase the speed and range at which you can rescue humans. Some that make upgrades cheaper. And others that give you a power-up at the start of each mission.

Effective use of power-ups can be essential to beating some missions. You can have a powerful laser that destroyers things faster. Very useful against the boss ships. A shield to give you temporary immunity; essential on those levels where the screen becomes flooded with bullets. And a mega-bomb that wipes the screen clear of bad guys when you’re getting overwhelmed.

All in all, the game feels like a modern version of the games from my youth. In particular, it reminded me of Twin Cobra. The basic idea is the same. Top down scroller, waves of bad guys come and you can find weapon upgrades along the way. There are lots of games with that general premise I’m sure.

The modern aspects are very nice though. There’s no saving in the middle of levels but there’s no having to start from the beginning every time. The game doles out the difficulty increase smoothly. New types of hazards are introduced with each level, soon becoming common place in harder levels.

Overall, it’s been a fun game to work our way through during the summer. Stuck trying to beat level 13 now and there’s still three more we haven’t unlocked. Fortunately, Xbox had another deal. Three months of Game Pass for $15. So that’s 6 months for $16. Hopefully beat it by then because I don’t think I’ll use the Game Pass enough for $15 a month.