There are plenty of side-scrolling shooters on the App Store, including Zombieville USA that seems to be the most popular, and we think that Inkvaders brings a lot of twists and a great art style to this genre; deeming it as one of the best. Your task is to save the human race from Martians attacking the Moon and Earth. To control your character (Generic Marine) you use two on-screen arrows to move, a jet pack button to fly and a fire button to shoot. In each level you will make your way from one side to the other, while shooting the hordes of Martians who are all out to kill you.

There are two modes in Inkvaders; Story and Endurance. In Story mode you'll play through 30 levels split into three environments; Moon, Army Base and City, while Endurance mode will test how long you can survive. To protect yourself from the Martians, there are three different weapons; a laser gun, a pistol and a rocket launcher, although these are only what they start out as. Throughout the levels you will come across vending machines where you can upgrade your guns and buy ammo, health and jet pack fuel, using money you earn from shooting Martians. This means that through upgrades, your pistol will eventually become a Gatling gun.

There are other things you will come across as you play through the levels such as pick-ups, that will give you ammo, health or jet pack fuel when you touch them, and rocks, that give you extra cash when your character touches them. There is also a rush pick-up which will trigger the rush - one of the things that makes Inkvaders completely different from every other side-scrolling shooter. The rush lasts for about 30 frantic seconds, in which a huge amount of Martians will run towards you, for you to kill. We think that this short change in game play really helps to break up the repetitiveness of the game and is a big opportunity to earn money to buy upgrades.

The cutout enemies and doodle style of Inkvaders is fantastic and definitely one of its strongest points. Much like in Zombies vs Sheep; when shot, the enemies fall apart like cardboard puppets losing their split pins except with a ton of blood. The menus look great and we that that the virtual finger that puts all the buttons onto it, as well as turning over the pages as you progress through the game, is an excellent touch and shows how polished this game is. The sound effects and music sound fantastic and fit the game perfectly. The only problem we have with the graphics; is there isn't much variety between the levels in each of the environments, so while they look good, they can become boring after a while.

Inkvaders feels a lot easier than Zombieville USA, and it's lucky that it saves the level you are on when you exit, because games are generally a couple of hours long, especially on the easy and normal difficulty levels. The game is more difficult on hard but we still feel that an insane difficulty would be good for shorter and more challenging games. We also found that it takes around three to four levels before you have enough money to upgrade your guns which is rather a lot considering the story mode only has 30 levels. However, these problems are only minor and Inkvaders is an extremely polished and fun game. It is well worth the small asking price to blast some Martians and save human kind!

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Inkvaders HD, B

Review by Ben Briggs, July 22, 2010

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