2079 – Review

Turn around and there’s a crowd of spacecrafts coming at you.  One of them is spinning slowly at you, waiting for you to come close enough to it that it can kill you.  Another is constantly following you, turning its weapon of mass destruction in a clockwise fashion, expecting to hit you and cause you to perish under its power.  You suddenly become overwhelmed with one, five, fifteen spacecrafts regenerating and coming at you at the same time, in one unstoppable cavalcade of evil space minions.  Not able to take it anymore, you shake your iPhone and with a swift wave that overtakes all the spacecrafts, they are gone and you are safe for a fraction of a second before they begin to come at you once more. 

2079 is a never-ending war game against alien spacecrafts determined to chase you and destroy your spaceship at all costs.  Surprisingly accurate controls that rely on the iPhone’s accelerometer and a portion of the touch screen allow you to embark on your space adventure in no time.  The game’s layout and premise is quite simple.  To move, just tilt your iPhone in the direction you want your spaceship to go.  The angle of your tilt affects the acceleration of the spaceship.  Keep your finger on the designated shooting area to blast your enemies away, moving your digit in either direction around the circle, regardless of where your spaceship is traveling. 

There are four different types of enemies, three of which chase you at top speed to try and destroy you.  One is stationary, and can be very dangerous if you don’t maneuver your ship around it or shoot it in time.  You get plenty of help through “?” boxes that you have to shoot in order to uncover the prize lying inside them, ranging from energy shields to score multipliers.  And, of course, there are also weapon upgrades that can increase the amount of deadly lasers you shoot, and create a brick wall that enemies cannot pass.  The upgrades are all temporary, so use them wisely.  The ultimate weapon, which is the wave blast, is one of the most useful features of your spaceship, and may help you out of many tight spots.  Just by shaking your phone, if you have blast ammunition, all the enemies that are on the field whenever you use it are destroyed.  Cool, right? I think so, especially since you lose a life if you let even one enemy touch you.

Ultimately, you have to survive as long as you can in your space adventure and, if you are especially ambitious, try to beat your high score, or someone else’s.  For 99 cents, the game is a steal, and can provide you with hours of fun at a time if you become really good at it.  There’s nothing like blasting away aliens.