Last Space Fighter (11.1Mb)
This is listed very briefly in the giveaway freeware library, but I think it deserves a post of its own. There are a few minor annoyances; - you can simply ignore the advert when the game loads, and it links to the gamehitzone.com webpage after installing and after closing the game. But these aside, it’s a very competent Galaxian type vertically-scrolling space shooter.
If level 1 is a bit slow, progress is saved once you complete each level and it does get far more intense as you progress through the levels. You have to avoid fixed obstacles, but otherwise have freedom to fly to any part of the game play area. This is quite useful in avoiding fixed guns and the various boss space ships you encounter as well as drones and ordinary enemy space fighters. The boss ships will track you and aim for you from any part of the screen. If the flight patterns are straightforward and predictable early for the drones and ordinary fighters, the bosses attacks more than make up for this. Later on the drones flight patterns are much more difficult to tackle.
You will need to watch your armour levels at lower right as unfortunately there’s no sound effect when you take a hit, so it’s very easy to take several hits before you realise you are in dire trouble! You do have four lives though per level. Later on it gets quite a ‘bullet-hell’ environment and with some stationary guns and bosses aiming for you, it gets really intense later on. There are also force fields where you need to deactivate them before you can fly through them as they descend down the screen.
The graphics are excellent, and there is a fractional delay in between firing shots that will keep you on your toes. The music is good and you can either use the mouse and left button to fly, aim and fire, or the (W,A,S,D) keys and either the ‘Ctrl’ or ‘Alt’ keys to shoot. There are weapon upgrades, including missiles, extra lives and armour healing power-ups. It only has one difficulty level which is something of a pity, but it starts off relatively easy and after a few levels does get rather difficult, to say the least! It has 12 levels if you can get that far (!) and the option to restart from the beginning for new players. You can play windowed or full-screen, and it runs without any problems in Win 7 as well as Vista and XP.
While there are many similar freeware games, the bosses are excellent in Last Space Fighter and the graphics are better than in most similar games! I’m quite happy to put up with it opening my browser after play, for the quality of the game!