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 Just like The Rockford Files, but with less 70s private eyes, I'm going to be writing a series of reviews of budget games as released by a company called Phoenix Games. Based in Holland, apparently, they're a small team of game publishers and marketers who release a wide variety of extremely inexpensive games for PlayStation 2 (and PS1, DS and PC, too). As far as I can tell, all of their games are developed for them, as opposed to the company 505 GameStreet, whose product is primarily translations/conversions of Simple series games from Japan.
Air Raid 3
 According to the box, this game ensures many hours of action packed fun. I have to admit that was I was actually ensured many minutes of action packed fun, but I'm a mark for Afterburner and its clones, so that's not surprising. Air Raid 3 is a 3D flight combat game on a set path (into the screen) with simplistic background graphics, repetitive plane models, a gorgeous main model (which is a good thing, as you're staring at it the entire time you play) and some surprisingly good particle effects. It almost looks better than Wii Heatseeker, which is as much an insult to Heatseeker as it is a compliment to this game, especially given that the entire budget for Air Raid 3 was probably a few dollars less than the budget for Heatseeker's cover art. Like Afterburner, you have a limited amount of missiles and unlimited machine gun fire and lock on of missiles once you pass the crosshair over each potential target. Unlike Afterburner, though, you also have limited fuel, a set amount of enemy targets to destroy before each level (15 in total) ends and the ability to fly through ghostly floating pickups - point bonuses, fuel and extra missiles. Air Raid 3 features boss fights, too - the first couple levels have a giant bomber that fires waves of missiles back at you. They're very reminiscent of Capcom's 194x-esque bosses, but in glorious 3D, baby. There's a generic rock tune playing throughout, workable sound effects, a decent sense of speed, and a lot going on in front of you without being too distracting. If you're all about the Afterburner action, and you see this for some ridiculously low price, you may be pleasantly surprised, at least for 20 minutes or so. Anyone have any idea what happened to Air Raid 1 and 2?
G Force
 It's a really humdrum waterskiing simulation where you collect stars, follow the boat's preset path, and try really hard but fail to pull off 'stunts', even after reading the manual and cursing your hamfisted button slammery for the ineffective gesture it is.
Shadow of Ganymede
 The most amusing part of "Shadow of Ganymede" for me was EB's "Seen it cheaper? We'll match it!" decal overlapping the $19.91 price tag, which was on top of the $19.95 price tag, which was on top of the $24.95 price tag, all of which were near the giant "$10 off marked price" diamond shaped decal covering the somewhat exciting cover art, and adjacent to the giant "Trade 'n' Save" pyramid shaped decal. I'm not sure which aspect is more amusing - that the game warranted three different price points during its shelf life, that they actually believed someone would want to price match a budget game like this (which I've never seen for sale outside of EB, by the way), or that they hoped someone would trade in God of War II, Zelda for Wii, or Christ knows what to get credit to save money on "Shadow of Ganymede". When the game starts up, it checks for a save file, then shows a very brief FMV of ships approaching a planet, along with the game title. It got my hopes up, but then I made the classic mistake of starting the actual game itself. Anyone out there ever own or play on an Atari Jaguar? Did you see "Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy"? Are you getting a mental picture now? Yes. Lovely. Imagine that, only 800% more difficult, and with worse ship graphics. "Shadow of Ganymede" is a horizontal shooter, scrolling left to right over various generic landscapes - starfield, a rather odd flattened-out Earth with no cloud cover whatsoever, a moonscape and more. Waves of generic enemies fly along in various patterns and kill you with alarming frequency, as happens in the various other examples of the genre. You start the game with lasers best described as Completely And Utterly Ineffective, and should you survive long enough to get weapons pickups, you can upgrade them to Pissy, Useless or I Haven't Named This Far Because You'll Never Live Long Enough To Actually Pick It Up. There're also shields which absorb one hit, or extra lives. You may note the ever so slight patina of bitterness in that previous paragraph - when even the tiniest and most common enemies take multiple shots, and the more powerful ones take literally ¾ of a screen worth of constant shooting to explode, you're in trouble. Memorising all the patterns of the enemy ships might carry you a while, but where's the fun in that? Continues are infinite, and don't even reset your score, but they're from the beginning of each level. It's almost a relief that there aren't any boss fights, as I can't even imagine how difficult they would be to beat. I can unreservedly rave about the music - each level has its own tune, and they're fantastic, far better than you'd ever expect to hear in a budget game like this. If you're a sucker for punishment, or wish to relive the days of 8 or 16 bit generic shooters, or you just want to get so frustrated that you'll burn down an orphanage while raping a schoolbus full of nuns, go right on ahead and track this game down. This review is already longer than the manual that came with it, by the way.
Combat Ace
 It's exactly the same game as Air Raid 3 with the exception of the plane models. Allow me to establish a timeline for you:
21 seconds - start game from title screen 22-25 seconds - amusement at complete recycling of Air Raid 3 26-28 seconds - amusement at a biplane firing endless missiles 29-30 seconds - desperately reaching for off switch
Obliterate!
 Do you like light gun games? Are you shocked and dismayed by light gun games that don't actually support use of light guns? Stay away from "Obliterate" then. If, like me, you were dropped on your head as a child and actually enjoy light gun games more when just using a crosshair and a standard controller, then you might get a few laughs here, although most of them will be at the expense of the ridiculous sound effects. "Obliterate" is an attempt to cross the shooting minigames of "Point Blank" with an overarching plot and cutesy characters ala "Lemmings". Earth is under attack and only you can save the planet! Three worlds and 36 levels, each level being along the lines of "shoot X aliens before the time runs out", "defend the city by shooting all aliens", "only shoot the buses with aliens on them", etc, you get the idea. Wrinkles are thrown into the mix, for example, you'll get a message saying "don't shoot any of the blue ones from now on". To finish "story mode", you only need to complete three missions each "world", but "challenge mode" lets you play any you like. Graphics are certainly cute and functional enough - it could be argued that they're pretty good, really, even without considering the budget nature of the game. Yet again I'm confronted with an excellent tune, but it doesn't really seem to suit the nature of the game. On the bright side, there's actually full credits for the game in the manual - Mark Fitt, you're a great musician, keep up the good work.
Fruit Fall
 Urgh. This is an excellent implementation of a game that I can't stand. If you haven't heard of "Fruit Fall", it's a puzzle game where you have a maze on each screen and various pieces of fruit spread throughout them - the goal is to get all the like fruit adjacent to each other so they'll disappear and eventually clear the maze entirely. This is achieved by rotating the maze, 90 or 180 degrees at a time. It's possible this might appeal to you, and if so, more power to you, but I personally wanted to give up videogames forever after about three stages. Fortunately sanity was restored by a few rounds of Mr Do, but it was touch and go there for a while. If you're really curious about Fruit Fall, why not find one of the free Flash versions on the web? Sure, that's not as good as paying $AUS10 for the PlayStation 2 version, or even better $AUS50+ for the Wii version, called "Super Fruit Fall", but it'll do in a pinch. The good news is that it has yet another nice bit of music, some amusing if incongruous animations going on behind the playing field that keep the screen interesting without being too distracting, and there's apparently 75 stages of puzzles, so you'll be busy for quite some time. Good luck with that.
Turbo Trucks
 There's an enduring and proud tradition of truck based racing games on various platforms, ranging from such delights as "Eighteen Wheeler", "Big Mutha Truckers" and of course the all time classic of the genre, "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing". You're Winner! "Turbo Trucks" is the rotting roadkill of this procession of excellence, what with its generic handling, ridiculously low difficulty level and rudimentary features. Once you decide on single race, grand prix or time attack, you have a selection of trucks to choose from, all of which are distinctly different in style and appearance and practically identical in handling and performance. The tracks you race on are somewhat meandering, without any particularly sharp curves. I cleared the entire game in about half an hour and only touched the brake button once by accident in an attempt to see if I could change the view from third person to windscreen view. For the record, the view's fixed. The background graphics? Well, aside from some rather hideously blurry and two dimensional trees in the 'forest' stages, there's also some red desert stages, with equally detailed cacti to bounce off of. Did I mention that going off road has no effect on your speed whatsoever, so long as you don't crash into a rock, tree or cactus? The AI on the other trucks is pretty simplistic, although I must say I was actually rammed off the road two or three times while completing all three sets of races. It certainly wasn't because of any particular challenge or difficulty, it was more out of an attempt to extract some entertainment value. Speaking of entertainment, pressing Select resets your truck to the middle of the track, a common feature in many racing games nowadays, but if you're not already in last place, the game invariably drops you on top of one of the trucks that were behind you. It brought back fond memories of goofing with the vehicle spawn cheat in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City". So, no challenge whatsoever, ugly graphics, minimal features. When I say minimal, finishing the Amateur cup unlocks a truck and the Semi-Pro cup, finishing that unlocks the Pro cup and the King Cobra truck, and winning the Pro cup unlocks the Secret truck, which is a black palette swap of one of the other trucks you can start with. Also, finishing first in the first race of the Pro cup with the Secret truck crashes the game, so that's pretty awesome. In what would appear to be a common theme (see what I did there?) for these games, there's an excellent piece of music, but unfortunately there's only one for the entire game, so by the time you've finished 3 or 4 races, you'll be hitting the mute and turning up Godspeed, You Black Emperor. At least you would be if you were me, anyway.
Search and Destroy
 The plots added to these Phoenix games never fail to amuse me. I admire their efforts, and they somehow even manage to make at least a tenuous form of sense when compared to the game they're for, but why bother? Perhaps it's just a sign that they really do care about bringing "quality product to the market", as they say in the company profile on their website. For the record, the plot to "Search and Destroy" is as follows: 2050 AD
Two groups are fighting for an artifact. Not exactly "Dune" or "Stranger in a Strange Land", is it? But it struck me as interesting that they set the game after the climactic event, and the game is the escape - it certainly makes sense for a vertical shooter, explains why there's just one of you, and avoids the usual clichés. Am I the only one wondering why in all those other shooters, you were chosen as the only ship to achieve the mission, or that the rest of your planet's forces were destroyed, or what have you? Yes, you're right, I'm thinking way too much about this, but my point (and I do have one) is that someone at Phoenix games, or at least the developer of the game, cared enough to at least try and say something different, and did so with a minimum of extra bushwa. Certainly not something I've achieved here! "Search and Destroy" is a vertically scrolling shooter with the ability to move a fair distance left and right as well (like "Raiden", for example). The 3D effect of the ground you're scrolling over is very well implemented, too. Don't get me wrong, it's still very generic - and I could swear one of the ground textures in the third level was a scan of a slice of wholemeal bread - but the illusion of flying over a real landscape is more successful than I've seen in many other games. As a matter of fact, for a while there I was almost tempted to believe I was flying over the landscapes from Turbo Trucks - I'm sure I recognized smaller versions of those cheesy cactus shapes, for example, and some of the colour choices were awfully familiar! It's only necessary to shoot things flying at you from the top and sides of the screen - although some enemies do fly up from the bottom in a lower plane, and then loop around to fly at you. Most of the patterns are pretty straightforward, although there's the occasional bit of cheapness where planes fly at you far faster than you could have a hope to destroy them - at least with the initially weaker weapons. The weapons can be powered up a few times - three way spread, shots that arc out from the sides of your ship and curve forward, that kind of thing. It can prove to be a bit of a challenge to get your weapons to full power, at least while you're initially getting used to things, but once you do, the feeling of power is tangible. You can also collect shields, which will last you a few hits. "Search and Destroy" is far more forgiving than "Shadow of Ganymede", and seemed, at least to me, to have a pretty decent balance of difficulty vs cheap deaths vs interest level. Hell, I was even quite surprised by something that happens at Level 5, got as far as Level 7 before stopping to write this review (which was about 40 minutes of play, perhaps less), and that's out of a total of 15 levels. "Gigawing" or "Raiden" this isn't, but it's most certainly a bit of fun. Also, yes, surprisingly enough the music is terrific too - high energy techno tracks (OK, maybe not that high) keep you going through each level. The sound effects are particularly dire, though - the sound effect for your bullets hitting enemy ships sound like someone running a metal pipe along a chain link fence. However, it is amusing that they used the sound of a .357 Magnum firing for the most powerful power up.
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