Some gaming news updates: SkyForce Reloaded tested; SuperTux tested on iPAQ 1940

SkyForce Reloaded update

I've recently reported about the sequel, SkyForce Reloaded, to, in my opinion, the best vertical scroller shooter, SkyForce.

In the meantime, I had the chance of thoroughly testing it and was very pleased. It ran on all my test Pocket PC's extremely well (albeit it was a bit on the slow side on my "old", 400 MHz QVGA HP iPAQ 2210). It runs astonishingly well on all my VGA devices: the WM5-upgraded HP iPAQ hx4700, the Dell Axim x51v and the Pocket Loox 720. That is, it seems it has no performance problems with any VGA devices.

The differences between it and SkyForce are as follows:

1. visuals are much better, particularly the recently-introduced fog and lighting effects (which can also be seen in the new, "leaked" K-Rally videos). The visuals are just uncomparable to other vertical scroller titles (except for, maybe, the very cool destruction sprite sequence in Particle Wars (reviewed in the Roundup of All Pocket PC Games Part I) common for all 4Pockets games) it's so darned beautiful. Also, there are new 3D objects: trees, bridges, new kinds of towers and, particularly, a lot of mounds. (Note that the latter are rendered sometimes in a bit fuzzy and strange way, which can easily draw the attention. Hope this will be fixed in a subsequent build.)
2. the list of the already-unlocked maps is really welcome!
3. while the music/sound engine is the same (not stereo), there seems to be more in-game sounds in the game
4. many of the opponent sprites have been made bigger and more detailed
5. it's no longer compatible with the Pocket PC 2002 operating system (unlike older versions/ builds of SkyForce)

Note that each level (there are eight of them and you can any time replay 'unlocked' levels - while still there's no saving/loading, this is certainly very good news) in general, has a different music track and so do the "big boss" levels. The music tracks are completely new (not just reused tracks from older iD games) and are, as usual, really good, retro-style ones.

To summarize my opinions, all I can say is a big WOW! The best indeed got even better. Go get it - if you like vertical scrollers, you can't go wrong with this title. (Too bad it doesn't have a trial version - not that it would need one, it's so good.)

SuperTux update

I've also tested the brand new SuperTux (see review here) on the iPAQ 1940 and was very happy to see it ran far better than on any of my other test PDA's: with about 35-40 frames per second.