Aegis Wing is a below average side-scrolling game which is free to download off the Xbox Live Marketplace.
In the game, you play as the last hope for humanity in a fight against an alien race called the Araxians. From the outset you’re thrown into a new starfighter experimentally developed with Araxian technology. Since you are the last hope for mankind against this unknown threat, you are asked to go the heart of the Araxian fleet and destroy them. Along the way you’ll encounter various enemies. The story is portrayed at the beginning of each mission by a few sentences while the game loads up; it’s pretty weak. The Story has no sudden plot twists and remains relatively boring.
Aegis wing doesn’t bring any change to the classic side-scrolling formula. You can move up and down the screen and go forward and back while shooting at your enemies. Like many other games of this genre, Aegis Wing allows you to pick up various power-ups. You’ll find that these power-ups will come in handy to your success and there are plenty of them to choose from, ranging from the basic shield to protect you from enemy fire to the heat seeking missiles that will hunt down your foe and destroy them. Along the way you will also encounter power-ups such as a big laser beam and a distorter that makes you evade enemies. The main enemies of the game, The Araxians, use various different starships to try and stop you in your path. The enemy ships don’t look like anything special but have various different recognizable features such as the shapes or colours. All of the enemies follow set paths and therefore it’s easier for the player to navigate through the level with minimal damage. This makes the game to easy in some cases however Aegis Wing throws lots of enemies on screen at once in certain sections making it difficult to avoid the enemies and requires you to shoot them. Aegis Wing also features a handful of boss fights. The bosses are big and look a lot nicer than the typical Araxian starships mainly due to the character model that is used for them. Aegis Wing includes an online co-op mode where you and up to three other players can work together and try and complete the story. Playing with others gives you a chance to try out a few things that you couldn’t do when playing single player, for example, you can try and form an “Epic” formation (four or more ships joined together) to quadruple your firepower and the strength of your power-ups. Aegis Wing also allows four player local play but the same principals as the online play apply. The addition of the online play makes the game a bit too easy as you can literally blast your way through the game in around 20 minutes losing hardly if any lives.
Graphically speaking Aegis Wing is a “get what you pay for” approach. The enemy ships lack detail but are full of very vibrant colours and the backgrounds are just dull containing very bland grey and black. Aegis Wing has a pretty smooth framerate however as when the screen is full of explosions the game rarely slows down keeping the action intense and fast. The same can’t be said for the sound as you get a loop of the same tune for every level. Also, tune isn’t catchy or fun to listen to either.
Overall Aegis Wing is your typical side-scrolling shooter with just the added bonus of online play. However it is free and for that price it’s worth a shot to anyone who’s willing to download it.