Last week, we got a chance to take a look at a classic retro-styled arcade game from Throwback Entertainment called Deflector Mobile. The game has you playing protector of the Earth who must ward off dangers from alien spaceships, asteroids and icy rocks. The game, which is currently available on Windows Phone 8 will also make its way to Windows 8.1 PCs in the coming days. We decided to take this game for a spin and check out its fun factor.
Deflector Mobile for Windows Phone Review
Deflector Mobile like most good games, starts off with the option to start playing right away or run through a brief tutorial to get a hang of the various control schemes. The tutorial isn’t very lengthy so you can jump right in and swipe this way and that to see how the whole thing plays out. I was initially stranded with one particular swipe action and it took me a while to figure out that I had to swipe the globe to change the controls. There… I’ve given you a fair bit of warning. Maybe a little work on the touch mechanics would have helped.
Onto the game now, where we have our beautiful planet, sitting right in the center of the screen waiting for disaster to happen, and rightly enough, there comes a flaming asteroid eager to slam into it. On your left is a laser that takes down certain kinds of projectiles like those massive alien spaceships. To the right is a rocket that can take down asteroids and other rocks. You can start targeting the projectiles by tapping on the respective options and thankfully there’s no aiming to take your shots. A green shield protects the Earth from damages but that only lasts so long in the face of surmounting hits.
You can also swipe the globe (it will change its glow from red to blue and green) to change the arrangement of the on-screen elements. If you are more comfortable moving the rocket to the left, or the laser to the right, you can do it at a swipe. And if you just want to go totally immersive, you can go to the Settings that is displayed at the bottom left of the screen and enable it to remove all screen elements from the screen. You’ll have to rotate the Earth like crazy in this one. One of the first odd things I noticed about Deflector Mobile was the lack of background music at the start of the game. Turns out this was disabled at start so you will have to go to the Settings to turn it on if you’re having the same issue. No sound effects though. duh!
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While the first flaming asteroid takes its own sweet time to come at you, and you’re feeling pretty good about being in control of the situation, you’ll be advised to keep those fingers super reflexive because what follows soon after is complete chaos. That shield will come in pretty handy now, but with the projectiles closing in such large numbers, you won’t stand a chance of surviving for too long.
The main aim in Deflector Mobile I guess is to rack up as big a score as you can, so you’ll probably be trying a few different things to get better at it each time. A health meter at the top of the screen will enter into decline mode as you take hits and its game over when you’ve run out of power. You can resume the game by inserting coins, which so far I haven’t found a way to earn them, which is where the IAPs come in I guess.
The online leaderboard again, seemed to be disabled and sadly it only showed 3 of the top contenders all of whom happened to be Bob. I have no idea where I stand sadly, so there’s not much competition going on there at the moment. Overall, the game doesn’t offer too much variety and reason for players to want to beat those top scores. The developers could do well to make a few fixes and add a bit more variety and depth to the game, and then this one could be really far more enjoyable than it is at the moment.
Defector Mobile is free to download so do give it a try and tell us if you managed to beat Bob’s big score. I’m still getting there!
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