Doodle War is a shooter as basic as they get, desperately trying to sell virtual copies by appealing to one of people's most basic emotions: The warm feeling you get from seeing cute little kids. Singaporean developer Virtual GS let the 5-year old girl Lim Xin Quan draw the game's graphics and record some cutesy announcements like “game over”, while the girl's father has been tasked with creating the game itself. The result is better than the other attempt at the same formula (Invader War; see the hori shooter section), but unlike Invader War, Doodle War isn't free, instead setting you back $1...and it's questionable as to whether you would want to spend that.

The relative touch controls work well and some of the (non-animated) enemies look relatively cute with special mentioning going to the big green alien boss waiting at the end of the game. So much for the good aspects. Most enemies can't be seriously called “cute”, only “unrecognizable”, the only slight form of variety stems from enemy sprites changing every ten or so foes, the game is extremely easy and it only lasts for about 5 minutes. Kids might potentially get some enjoyment out of the game and they also might appreciate the children's songs running in the background, but even they shouldn't be hard-pressed finding better alternatives.

The studio that already brought us Doodle War has delivered another similarly simple vertical shooter, albeit this time apparently not being developed by one of the studio's kids, but rather by an adult. For whatever that's worth, seeing as how entirely unremarkable this app is. Sure, the relative touch controls work well, but your journey upwards through space past asteroids, mines and alien crafts is boring and all too easy, constantly throwing weapon upgrades and health refills at you. It is absolutely playable and might even be considered as tolerable if only it was free (and maybe the only game available), but you're honestly expected to spend money on this when there are so, so, so, SOOOOO many better shooters out there for free or for a buck. Certainly makes you wonder how they got the 2.7 million downloads they are claiming to have accumulated...perhaps this is courtesy of the shameless remix of Axel F (that tune from Beverly Hills Cop) used here.

Some games are so bad, people can enjoy playing them for all the wrong reasons, which actually makes them good games again, since the very definition of a good game for most people would be a game, that can be enjoyed for whatever reason. So many terrible games have been produced with the most glaring flaws flying under the QA's radar and sometimes we love developers like Titus, Ocean, LJN and Crave for this, But then there is the other breed of "bad" games. Games that are merely boring, uninspired and bland, not even kind enough to offer any form of comic relief. One of these truly maddening games is StarCannon.

This vertical shooter must have been made with trying to create the most repetitive game in the history of forever in mind. Using perfectly functional direct touch controls you sway left and right in open space, shooting dozens upon dozens of samey enemy spacecrafts swarming in from above. Enemies move down in straight lines, some of them shoot and some don't, they all look more or less the same, and after what feels like an eternity you finally meet up with an equally generic boss. Some enemies drop an item that increases your score multiplier up to level 20, and other items include standard stuff like speed-ups, smart bombs or three different weapons: A laser, a spreader and a beam weapon shooting in an arc. Weapons are upgraded the more items you grab, and the score multiplier can be exchanged for a temporary bullet-time, but none of this matters, since StarCannon is already (mind-numbingly) easy without any of this.

As hinted at before, there is nothing inherently messed up here. You won't encounter any bugs, control issues, frustrating design decisions or anything along this line. Well, StarCannon would probably have been a lot more interesting if it had any of this, because as it is, it's probably the least remarkable shooter on the iPhone. Period. I can't imagine a single reason for doing so, but if you want to play it anyways, then head over to the developer's website, as that offers a free Flash version of StarCannon.

If there ever was an award for the most trustworthy company doing business on the App Store, possibly a vast amount of companies wouldn't even come close to having any chance at winning. Infiworks is the best example I have encountered so far. Their games have all different kinds of names for example. To be more precise, a lot of their games have more than one name each, with different ones displaying on iTunes, on the iPhone menu and within the game itself. Infiworks also advertises their Codename Cobra Classic as being the successor to the highly successful Apache Strike...too bad there is no such game, only a Cobra Strike. What's more, they don't simply call their lite versions "lite version", but whatever else they can think of. There's a "classic" version here, a "DX" version there and most other full versions are called "deluxe" versions to differentiate them from the lite versions that lack any special moniker. In another great move Infiworks loves in-app advertisements. You might think it's fair in free games or to some degree in lite versions, but here you will even find them in paid apps! And to make matters worse, the apps immediately crash when trying to start them while being offline, because the ads can't load. Instead of allowing the player to at least play ad-free when offline, the developer decided not to allow him to play at all then. Or maybe Infiworks was simply unable to properly program their atrocities.

Case in point for all of this is xFighter, a run of the mill vertical shooter that is additionally hampered by shoddy game design on all fronts. On the App Store the demo version of this is called xFighter Classic and the full version is called xFighter 2, with both merely referring to themselves as xFighter ingame. This stupidity is beyond belief and it had me confused more than once, trying to figure out which one was the full game. It goes without saying that both share the same menu icon. The App Store description for the demo says it would be free for three days and not only has it said so for months now, but it also makes you wonder if they would really charge you money for a demo. The full version's description says it's free for Xmas, by the way, with the last update having been in April and as of this writing it is a wonderful summer.

The game itself is ugly, boring and frustrating with the ad at the bottom asking me to go to the zoo arguably being the most attractive thing to look at. Maybe that's just what they were going for. The landscapes look like photos being exponentially bloated out of proportion, thus looking pixelated and muddy to no end. Enemies are as generic as they could possibly be and also puny. This makes it all the more baffling why the game couldn't fit onto the screen just perfectly. Instead moving to the left or right scrolls the screen a bit to the side, which feels as awkward as in your average MSX game. The pacing is infuriatingly slow as you see the landscape pass by as if you were not flying high above it but sitting in a stroller and enemies appear accordingly infrequent. If waiting for something to happen lowers your concentration to the point where you manage to die, you will be delighted to see yourself being returned to the title screen. Why, you had three lives, you are wondering? Upon starting the game, the life counter does convey this image, but only to go down to a single life within mere moments for no apparent reason.

Infiworks has been guilty of many "crimes" already, mostly unleashing shoddy, samey games onto poor iPhone owners, but this time they have gone entirely overboard. Ace Striker is the exact same horrible abomination as xFighter 2 with the same levels, backgrounds, music, items, enemy placement, just with new (equally ugly) sprites to match the sudden shift to WW II, and an option to purchase two additional planes for a dollar each. Also, if you want to see later levels without beating the prior ones before, you get to buy access to them as well. Heck, even the ad-supported lite version follows the same route as for xFighter 2, being named Ace Striker Classic. Avoid at all costs.