Fractal Combat Review

Fractal Combat is a simple flight sim with a simple premise. Players pilot a ship in a large three dimensional arena, fighting their way through enemies while in search of targets that must be destroyed to complete each mission. Players pilot their ship by tilting their device and using on screen buttons to fire missiles at enemies and targets. Targeting enemies is quite simple. As soon as an enemy is in range and fairly centered in the player's sights, the HUD will highlight it. A missile fired at a highlighted enemy or target will then track and destroy it unless the target is able to evade the missile.

Fractal Combat offers very little variation in the gameplay from mission to mission. The game is broken into several different types of environments, but the only real difference from one environment to another is the color of the ground, water, and sky, and the appearance of the enemies and targets. In each mission the goal is the same. Track down designated targets -- either mobile flying targets or stationary ground targets -- and destroy them. The number of targets increases with the difficulty of the mission. While the player tries to track and destroy these targets, they are also harassed by enemy ships which chase the player and fire missiles at their ship. To complete the mission, the player must destroy all of the targets before they are destroyed by the enemy forces. The number of enemies also increases as the missions become more difficult.

Depending on their performance during each mission, players are awarded points which can be spent on new ships as well as weapons and defensive upgrades and offer some incentive for repeated playthroughs.

The game controls well and it is easy enough to pilot the ship and shoot down enemies and targets. The visuals are a bit simplistic and they are generally very flat and bland, but they do convey the action of flying and shooting missiles across the sky. In a nutshell, Fractal Combat is a competent flight game and the gameplay is solid even if it is repetitive.