Time Rider 2

We don't know about you, but there's something remarkably satisfying about shooting down a huge in-game enemy. Maybe it's human nature. Maybe it's those stories you hear of wartime heroes taking on a whole battalion singlehandedly. Or, maybe, it's just the result of watching those Arnie/Chuck Norris/Stallone/Van Damme flicks enough times to warp our tiny, impressionable minds.

In whichever case, it's fair to assume most gamers love to shoot things – within the contexts of a virtual world, we stress. As such, the arrival of Time Rider 2 (what on earth happened to Time Rider 1?), a topdown 2D vertical-scrolling shooter in similar style to the fantastic Air Strike 1944, should be cause for celebration.

Like the aforementioned shoot-'em-up, Time Rider 2 packs in hectic action by the bucket load. With constant firing automatically handled by your little futuristic fighter, your only concerns are making sure your aim is true and keeping out of the way of the oncoming bullets.

That may sound nice and simple but, trust us, it's not. From the first of the game's ten long levels, the pace slowly increases as more enemies appear on screen, along with a generous number of handy power-ups. But even 30 seconds in the display is covered in bullets.

Time Rider 2, then, is not for the fainthearted, requiring superior hand-eye coordination to get to the end of the first level intact, let alone the end of the game.

Manage to last for a full minute and chances are you'll find yourself stumbling across what looks like a bit of a grey smear across your screen. Fly into it and you're suddenly within a side-on shooter, facing far fewer enemies but with hundreds of massive boulders more than happy to smash your tiny ship into smithereens.

Clearly, you can destroy them. And you should, because you get to fuel yourself up with the hidden plutonium found inside. What's more, there's little time to hang about – after some 20 seconds of side-on action, you're dumped back into the game's original vertical orientation.

With the action being so fast and frantic – you'll have sampled all the above within your first two minutes of gaming – you won't get much of a chance to admire the visuals. Entirely in (very solid) 2D, seeing so many bullets and ships flying around your mobile's tiny screen is an absolute joy.

Which is what you'd say about the playing experience were it not for Time Rider 2's intimidatingly high difficulty level (even on the alleged 'Easy' setting). As it stands, it's certainly more than competent, but it's only for those of us with a bit of a masochistic streak.