Ring Blade Review

Innovation in arcade shooters feels hard to come by. While so many bullet hell shooters are brilliant, they don't strictly offer anything different to the last, certainly not when it comes to something as pivotal as a control system. That's not to say that they're not great, and there are some great shooters on the App store, but it is nice to play something a little different from the norm. Ring Blade offers just that with not only an original way of controlling the action but a funky graphical style too.

Rather than the conventional way of holding your finger to the screen in order to fire and generally getting your finger a little in the way of seeing what's going on, Ring Blade offers a system that means you can easily see what's going on. Your ship (or whatever it's meant to be - I'm not sure admittedly!) is located at the bottom of the screen and you move the object around with your finger in the customary manner. Being located at the bottom means that you never feel like you're restricting what you can see. Firing is done in a more interesting manner than usual with a flick mechanism controlling the bullets or Ring Blade as it's known here. As you flick the Ring Blade, you can direct it in the direction of walls so that it bounces off thus flying around and inflicting more damage than before. As you'd expect, a series of power ups can be acquired too which is always handy.

It's all a pretty cool way of doing things and Ring Blade does a good job of easing you in gently before getting really hectic. The tribal tattoo style used for all the graphics is great and really makes a change from the more typical creatures that you see in these kind of games. Some of the bosses are particularly fearsome to look at. There are 30 levels in all but it would have been quite nice to have had more to play such as an Endless mode for example. Having said that, it'll take you a while to get through the 30 levels unless you're a true master of bullet hell games.

Ring Blade is a great concept and a great twist on the bullet hell formula. At its low price, it really is worth a shot and you'll no doubt find yourself impressed by the graphical style.