Final Flight of the Perseus

Sigh. Another game by a really, really close friend. In this case, the developer is Jesse Chounard. I was originally reluctant to review his new title, Final Flight of the Perseus, because I just reviewed not one but TWO games by my good buddy Edward D. Geronimo. By the way, it must really suck to be Ed. People are constantly screaming his name when they jump off high places. Sorry. I forgot to use that joke in both the Sportsfriends and Turtle Tale review, and who knows when I’ll get another chance to. Anyway, I hated Turtle Tale and said as much, and thus I feel comfortable talking about Jesse’s game.

It’s a wave shooter set in space, and a fairly basic one. On consoles, this isn’t exactly my favorite genre. On phones? I actually enjoy them quite a bit. Especially the way shooting is handled in both this and Hypership: Out of Control (which Jesse handled the porting of to iOS). There’s no fire button. Your ship shoots automatically. It makes playing such an joy, because you can devote your attention entirely to dodging enemies and maneuvering into position. It’s an awesome system, one that I wish more games would adapt. A lot of mobile shooters would have benefited from not having to tap the screen to fire.

Gameplay is fairly minimalistic. There’s no items at all to collect. Instead,  you earn money from each enemy you kill, which you spend on upgrades between each wave. Unfortunately, there’s only three: gun power, gun speed, and shields. You can replace the shields as you go along (well, most of the time. I actually stumbled upon a glitch that prevented me from buying them during my best run, which Jesse is going to patch out), but they get progressively more expensive. There’s a handful of bosses, and then levels start to loop after you clear the 28th. And that’s basically it.

Is it fun? Yes. As safe and shallow as it is, I was really surprised by how much it sucked me in. This is especially surprising given that the last game I played was also a safe and shallow game by a friend. And it was a platformer, a genre I typically like a lot more than space shooters. Some things are inexplicable I guess. It probably helps that there’s online leaderboards, and that the game is free. If you have no money on your iAccount, you could do a lot worse than wasting your time with Final Flight of the Perseus. You could be wasting your time with the Perseus’ other final flight, Wrath of the Titans. That movie fucking sucked.

Final Flight of the Perseus was developed by Third Party Ninjas.

It’s Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.