Xbox 360

Aegis Wing

Aegis Wing is a pretty decent looking and sounding 2D side-scrolling shooter with a nice twist on co-op multiplayer. The free price tag somewhat makes up for the lack of ship variation and small number of levels.

If you're down on lives, Aegis Wing also allows for respawns to occur by randomly finding and collecting a "capsule" (think cockpit of your spaceship) and allow your teammate to jump back in. This essentially makes the game easier than it would otherwise be, but that's just fine with me. There is a tradeoff, of course, in that if you fail to get your teammate back, the game can be over quickly. The only downside? The game has 6 levels, which can be accomplished in about an hour. So it's only a small diversion in the grand scheme.

Aegis Wing was meant to be played with other people online. If cooperative, twitch-based gameplay and armies of aliens appeal to you, it belongs on your hard drive. Plus it's free. That's a hard price to beat.

Single player is fun, but I found myself going back to multiplayer over and over simply because it’s awesome to play with three other people and see how far you can get as a team. The added nuances of co-op play are what really make this game worth downloading.

So it borrows from classics and offers a few original ideas of its own. Aegis Wing doesn't have enough content to compare to a commercial title, but for the short time it lasts, the game feels very complete, and is a great way to blast away a little free time among friends with this free download. Add more weapons, more enemies, and more original bosses, and the whole package would have been worth dropping 400 or even 800 points for. Shooters belong on XBLA, and this one is ace.

There’s no question that Aegis Wing is fun and challenging, but it would be a hard sell if it wasn’t a giveaway, especially given the wealth of games that are making up the Xbox 360 catalog. That’s not to say it’s a bad game—and it doesn’t look like a game made by three interns—but rather that its simplicity lacks nuance and richness of gameplay.

O visual do game é claramente inspirado no filme "Matrix", seja pela fase em que se sobrevoa uma metrópole abandonada ou pelo desenho dos chefes, que lembram as sentinelas (com direito a "olhos" vermelhos e tudo). Os outros cenários são lugares-comuns do gênero tiro espacial, como um campo de asteróides e uma colônia espacial. Não é um gráfico de ponta, mas funciona bem diante do porte da produção. Já a trilha musical é melhor que muito jogo "grande". Feito em moldes de música clássica, como acontece em muitos filmes e games, as composições inspiram batalhas dramáticas. A sonoplastia também é bastante competente. Tanto a parte visual como sonora foram feitos pela Carbonated Games, que tem "Uno" em seu currículo.