AirAttack 2 - Guns, bombs, and flamethrowers in churches

Neeeooooowwwwww, dakker dakker dakker, kabooooooom. That's the sound of AirAttack 2. Or at least it is in my head, where all of the best noises occur.

This is a World War 2 themed bullet hell-ish arcade blaster that looks absolutely brilliant, and features some wonderfully frantic dog-pile-fight action.

You're piloting a retro-fighter through a series of increasingly tough levels, upgrading your weapons as you do, and blowing up everything that moves. And a lot of things that don't.

Planes, boats, buildings, tanks, flamethrowers poking out of the windows of churches, nuclear bombs, the usual really.

You control your plane with a single finger. It fires automatically, you tap to drop a bomb, and there are a couple of special moves you can utilise by pressing buttons on the bottom left of the screen.

There's a health bar along the top of the screen that you can replenish with red crosses that downed enemies drop. You're chasing coins and stars, and dodging through anachronistic hot-neon bullets.

It's not as tough as some shooters, but there's certainly a decent level of challenge here. The chunky health bar gives more room for error, and the patterns of enemies, while pretty tough, always have reasonably obvious gaps.

There are patterns to follow, and some huge boss fights, but you never feel completely overwhelmed. And the game keeps things fresh too.

You're dodging through canyons of buildings, smashing through roofs to take out ordnance, and switching to a first person view to blat machine gun fire from your tail gun.

Worth a go then?

If you're a fan of shooters then you're going to lap this up, and it's got enough going for it that it'll probably hang around on your phone or tablet for a good long while.

There are bombing raids, a survival mode, asynchronous multiplayer challenges, and goals to complete on each level that require some smart timing and a little bit of luck. Plus there's a huge story mode to blast through.

And did I mention it looks gorgeous? Because it does. The building deformation, the rippling waves, the enormous explosions. This is a great slice of arcade eye candy that will have you grinning with glee.