Solar Blast is a low cost arcade experience that can provide mindless fun in very short bursts. In the center of the screen is a glowing dot and it is your job to protect this dot from incoming missiles by rotating a shield around said dot using the analog stick. In comparison, think of classic Asteroids, where your ship is in the middle of the screen, but you cannot move anywhere – you are stationary and just have to destroy everything as it comes your way. Being honest, this is little more than a Game & Watch title only without a high score leaderboard and even less graphics.

Even though it lacks any options or replayability, Solar Blast is still playable thanks to the brief stage design. It only takes about 20-30 seconds to complete each stage so progression moves at a fast pace. However, gameplay gets boring as blocking the incoming fire is never challenging. In fact, I purposed died around level 50 just to see what would happen; you just restart at the beginning of that stage which is no big deal.

As each stage begins, the game displays weird text phrases such as “Death Star?” and “Endless Mode” even though it is not endless and Star Wars is not involved.  Stranger yet, Pro Controllers are not supported and it is possible to replay any completed stage from the main menu but only by tapping through each stage with the shoulder buttons. For example, if you are currently on stage 67 but want to replay stage 4, you will have to click that shoulder button over 60 times to replay that specific stage. However, I am not sure why you would want to replay a stage since there is zero incentive to do so, all the incoming missiles are exactly the same, and each stage looked identical from the last. There are no unlockables, no upgrades, and the lack of a scoring system also seems like a missed opportunity.  The occasional power up, like the double sided shield, briefly spice up gameplay but only make the experience even easier.

There isn’t much to say about Solar Blast because there isn’t much of a game here. This is an attempt to advertise a 30 second Mario Party mini game as a full retail game but is only fun for that same amount of time.

SCORE: 5/10

Not As Good As: 2-player Pong
Also Try: playing Air Hockey with a buddy
Wait For It: that next free to play mobile clone of a clone game

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz

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