I bought
Assault Squadron last night. I was sold after a few minutes with the demo...errr...
lite version.
The production value on this thing is outstanding. It feels like a long lost Dreamcast euro-shmup, which means it may not be for everyone. The levels alternate from horizontal and vertical (think Life Force/Salamander). There's a pretty bad ass announcer who gives details about options and missions. They even went all out with CG videos that tie the stages together.
The difficulty can be a little on the extreme side. Some of the bullet patterns approach danmaku levels, but they still have that distinct, punishing euro direction. Hit boxes are larger than the modern Japan releases', too. People struggled with the controls in the early versions. Things appear to have been ironed out now, but the game is still very unforgiving. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It was refreshing to play an iOS shmup with spot on controls and a punishing difficulty I would expect from the 16 bit era.
It's kind of amusing because, now that I think about it, there isn't any kind of difficulty curve. The game is just hard. It starts out difficult and unforgiving and it stays that way.
Assault Squadron was released pre iPhone 4, so it runs on anything that can run iOS 3.0. Even then, it feels like a more modern release. The game runs at a pretty solid 60fps (their claim and I believe it) and rarely chops.
Other than the punishing difficulty, the only other flaw I could find with the game is that the bosses take way too long to kill and one of the ships has a pretty worthless special attack against stronger enemies.
