Holy batshit.
This game is ridiculously fun... I'm very surprised, because it's kind of simple. I can't remember the last time I gave a 10, but this game made me happy. ^_^
Maybe it's the old Scorched Earth days that this game made me miss. I love the bouncy terrain that you can mess with, and the chaos that you have to negotiate being fired upon in real-time while managing up to three turrets. Having five weapon/defense slots is very customizable, as well as the wealth of weapons you have to choose from. Granted, I found all but two or three utterly useless, but I still like the variety and style of each gun.
The terrain was beautiful in its simplicity. Colorful, but it didn't distract at all from your concentration or all the weapon fire. All the awkwardness and confusion came from learning the controls adeptly enough to keep track of my three turrets while managing their weapons. Once I was able to do that, it got really fun.
I didn't explore the defense weapons in depth. I made full use of my weapon slots for offense, so I could keep firing stuff while other slots were reloading. I found that the power shield was the most useful defense for me, being able to throw up 5 seconds worth of protection and stability (the guide is right, it's great for keeping you from bouncing around) so I could either buy time for nuke reloads or keep a turret safe for a bit while I switched to another one. Being able to repel even a nuke makes those power shields damn well worth it.
That's the one I focused on, but the wide variety of other defensive options (including two unique types of shields) adds to the game quality.
Weapons-wise, I found that thumpers and nukes were the ONLY useful guns. The rest were just filler. It was neat to play around with air strikes and satellite beams, but they didn't seem to kill anyone. Thumpers combined high damage with low reload time, and having four slots dedicated to even the basic thumper gun (fully upgraded), allowed me to mow down a fourth of the enemies before they even got a shot off.
Nukes were just hilarious. I dedicated my first turret to thumpers, then put four Mr. Nukes on each of the others, placing them in the most dense enemy formations. After my first guy cleared his area and wasted enough time, I'd switch to one of my nuke turrets just in time for them to be arming themselves... BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM shield, switch to turret 3 BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM shield. Suddenly there's only 2 enemy turrets left XD That was my strategy through level 40, until I finally pulled myself away from the game to write this review. That was too fun. :D
The story was a little weird, saying stuff about vikings and Athena and wars in the sky... honestly I was having too much fun to read through it all. But the overall setting was spot-on. Background music was very nice and soothing, appropriate for an "aurora borealis" setting. Graphically the game was very well done.. smooth.. oh, and I like how the reward system gave a new layer to each battle. Nice variety combining point bonuses with multiplier rewards/deductions. Even if you died, you could still earn money for repairs if you activated enough rewards. Overall it was quite fair, for me it was only frustrating until I realized which weapons were good, and that you could upgrade them all to level 5. Yah, that helped. ^_^
Only other thing I can think of is the freedom of placing your three turrets after you see the stage and enemy placements. Yet another layer of strategy that made it more fun.
Overall I seriously can't think of a reason to give this game less than a 9.5, which still rounds up to 10. I strangely found it that fun, and it takes a lot to hold my attention these days. Sorry for the extra long review, but I wanted to cover everything, as it has a LOT of interesting layers that kept me playing for hours on end.
Excellent work and mad props. ^_^ b