Remember air hockey? Halogen is like air hockey meets Spirit HD. It’s a title glittering with particle effects and many neon shapes, all combined to form an all-singing, all-dancing outing on our new gaming device of choice. For now, it’s an iPad exclusive and we can certainly see why that’s the case.

The game takes full advantage of the large available surface area in which you control a small blue disc, with which you can fling at the yellow pucks to make them dart all over the screen or simply nudge them for a little more precision. Additionally, the disc carries a number of green wedges that serve as your lives; run into an enemy, enemy bullet or lose a puck and you’ll lose one of them although more can be obtained during the game. The object of the game is to fill the vertical bars at the top with orbs that you collect during the round; you do this by lighting up the edges so that they glow, causing orbs of that colour to be released from defeated enemies. Once they’re all filled, the level explodes into a celebration of particle effects, congratulating your achievement.

If the graphics weren’t proof enough, Halogen is old-skool right down to its core. The game is simply brutally hard, with its single-player campaign mode that forces you to play through sixteen levels one after the other without even mid-round/checkpoint saving, multiple puck “power-ups” that can ruin your life count if you’re too aggressive with the game, and an “infinite” mode that can pull the rug out from underneath your feet. But if you’re a gamer’s gamer then you’ll love the challenge. Completing a round becomes very satisfying; especially as you can practice each one to hone your skill. The game comes with a two player air hockey mode too; however once you’ve played the main mode it’s unlikely that you’ll have more than one go at this one, it is far plainer and less exciting.

As you can see from the embedded trailer and our screenshots below this review, Halogen is a very good looking game somewhat reminiscent of the simple graphics of Star Trek interfaces. It doesn’t quite have some of the visual splendour of Spirit HD (with screen distorting explosions), but what it lacks in this area it more than makes up for with the gameplay which is constantly challenging and at times, infuriating. But in a good way. The presentation is rounded off with a cool sounding techno soundtrack that’s quite energetic, plus a handful of sound effects.

In all, we can safely recommend Halogen. Its difficulty, silky smooth performance and rich particle canvases are perfect for a trip back to when arcade gaming wasn’t about polygon count; it was about fun. And boy, this is fun.

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