Hostile Orbit

This is fun game and has great grafics! Some games are really cheesie on the grafics. And become a great disappointment! Not this one! The only thing that need fixing is how it closes between levels sometimes! The good thing is at least it comes right back to level were it shut off! Fix this and I'm sure everybody will give it 5 Stars.

Controls can make or break a game especially when it's a shooter-type game. In the case of Hostile Orbit, they don’t really help. The premise of a 360 degree space shooter for the iPhone/iPod similar to Pharos always sounds promising to me. Unfortunately, the devs for Hostile Orbit made the controls a lot more complicated than they need to be. The graphics are decent in a semi-3D environment. The background images look good, and the soundtrack is tolerable. You have three modes of difficulty to choose from: Lieutenant, Commander and Captain. When you go into settings, it even looks promising that you can to either touch or tilt with calibration included. You can also choose to use either accelerometer or touch controls. I would strongly suggest using accelerometer controls, and you’ll soon know why. The gameplay itself involves rotating a gun turret to destroy enemies and asteroids. Of course, you even have to worry not only about asteroids hitting your outpost, you have keep an eye out for kamikaze enemies will intentionally crash into you. On the gameplay screen itself, the damage bar is top center along with a radar on the right side. At the bottom, you have a power bar which monitors the turrets charge status. Overfiring the turret will cause it to stall so you'll be without firepower for a few seconds. Shield buttons are also located there as well which activate shields. Mind you, the shields consumer energy so you’re likely to overheat your turrents. In the middle is your crosshair which also shows distance between you and enemy ships and asteroids. Here’s the problem, unlike other similar games that provide a fire button or allow you fire by tapping anywhere on the screen, Hostile Orbit requires you to tap in the middle of the crosshair at the target. Two problems: your finger blocks your target because you will likely miss a few times, and if you’re using touch controls, that becomes a confusing mess as you’re trying to rotate around the screen and fire all by touch. I managed to play around with this, and you do get used to the game using accelerometer controls, but the devs need to just simply redo the firing mechanism. It’s way too sensitive and complex when they don’t need that. Would I recommend this? At this point, I think you would be better waiting for an update on the controls or picking one of the many other good options out there for the same price.