The Week in Games: Distant Galaxies

This one may be a freebie, but it has a good foundation to become a decent game. The good: It's a space shooter with very decent graphics, large, fairly complex levels, a multitude of enemies, power-ups to make your ship stronger, decent animation and video effects, and a decent flow. It also has mappable controls to ensure playability across a wide range of devices. 

 
 
The bad: On a VGA device, everything on the screen is tiny. In a way, this is a good thing because it allows you to see far ahead, and you're never caught off guard by enemies suddenly appearing on your screen from nowhere (this is a common complaint with shooters thanks to the tiny screens on Pocket PCs). Another concern is that the shooting range of your ship is very limited. You can increase the range with power-ups, but this doesn't seem to make much difference. As a matter of fact, the power-ups in general seem a bit weak. And this only makes the tiny graphics problem a bit worse. As I said before, it's nice to see so much of the level at once, but the lack of closeness to the action creates a feeling of distance from the action, almost as if you're zoomed out and watching the game from a radar screen.
 
Speaking of distance, the game doesn't have much of a plot, and there's no real communication with the player. A game like this ought to have some sort of storyline, some narrative that'll motivate the player before every mission. Make me feel like I'm making some progress toward something; otherwise I feel like I'm completing mission number X of however many are offered in the game.
 
Don't let my critique dissuade you from trying the game out. After all, it's a free title and superior to several other free titles. I hope, however, that Mr. Espinosa will consider my comments to make his good game into a great one.