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Star Soldier R a nice classic 2d scrolling shooter game with 3d graphics. Nice. I always liked 2d gaming it is just so much simpler and easier to figure out than these new fangled 3d games of today. Star Soldier R is just that simple but don’t get me wrong it is addictive as hell. All you do in the game is shoot the monkey poop out of enemies and targets on floating platforms just below your space ship vehicle. The vehicle has three speeds to pick for your kind of gaming. I myself set the ship to the fastest speed that I have found out is better than the two other slower modes with the ship set to high speed you can actually kill more enemies and ground targets and gain the status scores you want to achieve.

The graphics are somewhat nice for a 2d scrolling shooter everything is a nice rendered look with pretty cool explosion effects. The enemies have lasers or ball orbs that destroy your ship or damage your ship. And speaking of enemies they are all over the place, which means good for points. I would say though there is more ground targets than ships so many of the points are acquired by shooting domes and pipes and boxes. While you progress in the game there are a couple of things that can be collected for points or power ups. The important items to be collected are pink and white capsules, which look like old school glass fuses. The pink capsules improve your shooting ability via adding more directions to shoot. You can shoot from the front of the vehicle with two forward firing cannons as well as left and right directional angles and you just flip it around for the back end of the space ship. So what that means is your shooting in six different directions and this is what you want when you need to get those ultra high scores everybody always strive for and if your maxed out on the pink power capsules you get 10,000 bonus points if you collect more of them. The other important capsules are the white capsules which gives you shield abilities. You gain orbs that float around your ship to create a shield and the cool part is you can disperse these orbs out and they can help you shoot down enemies while you nail ground targets however they are rather weak to my liking but they are useful.

Now Star Solider R is pretty basic it has three modes to play the first two modes are time limit missions of two minutes and five minutes. The two minute mission you can barely get enough points to actually get on the score list the game has but the five minute mission is where you can rack up points nearing 1.5 million points or more if your that damn good. This mode you have the choice of automatic shot or manual shot. Automatic is just that you hold the button down and it continuously shoots. The other is obviously you press the button repeatedly to shoot. I am lazy so I picked automatic but I find this helps in getting higher scores.

The third mode is called the quick shot mode. In this mode you basically press the shoot button as fast as you can and take out ground targets before the time runs out my best on this is 6.1 which is quite hard to get but I am sure there are some people out there that have pretty fast shooting fingers.

As for controls they game has very simple controls and you have your choice between three different control methods. The three methods are classic NES mode with the Wii-Mote horizontal (a bit slow), The Nunchuck and Wii-mote Method (The best in my opinion), or the classic controller, which I could not tell you how it plays since I do not have one.

The only other features of the game is a records section where you can see your badass points from the game and you can also update your points to the leader board via the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. Also if you do well in your space adventure and get a high score the score is automatically updated but it is also a good idea to refresh your leader boards as they are continuously changing. This point system leader board is pretty similar to the actions you have to take in Sega’s Ghost Squad for the Wii.

Star Soldier R is a nice pick up and play game. It can become addicting but on the flipside this can become boring pretty quickly. The only downsides of this game is the boring fact and also there is not a continuous or longer minute mode to play but I understand due to size restraints of the Wii flash drive this would not be possible – Hard Drive Nintendo Hard Drive!! Of course Hudson could have stamped a disc of this game with more modes too!

Also, here is a game strategy tip with a reiteration. Set the vehicle to fastest speed and move horizontally left to right while shooting.

In closing the game is fun for the price for a little while or for those moments when you do not want to be engrossed in a deep storied game. I would suggest this to gamers, classic arcade gamers, and some casual gamers, as I just can’t see Grandmother playing this game. Pick the game up it is pretty cheap.