Review: Iron Square’s Surface to Air Mayhem

by Eric March on October 10, 2008 at 11:52 pm

When we last left our friends at Iron Square, I had given their fun little virtual game show Mr. Trivia Lite the twice-over because they had spiffed up and fixed the issues with the first version I had reviewed and snarked all over for its habit of mangling the English language while conveniently ignoring my tendency to eject streams of run-on sentences everywhere I went. In the re-review I pronounced that they had done good and with with a bit more work it could even be great, but was still a fine product in its own right.

The last month-and-change certainly haven’t seen them sitting idly by any means. In fact, they’ve apparently been working double-time, because they’ve already gone and added a brand new game to their lineup: Surface to Air Mayhem, and you know what? Holy crap.

But let’s get the plot synopsis out of the way first. You are the commander of the fictitious Shelton Air Force Base, which is currently under siege. Your job is to command the Super Turret code-named “Mayhem” to fire surface-to-air missiles and take down wave after wave of enemy aircraft as they fly by until reenforcements arrive.

If you’re an old fogey gamer like me then this may be sounding just a little bit familiar: Atari 2600 Air-Sea Battle, perhaps? Oh yes. Yes, indeed, because the gameplay at its most elementary level does bear a very strong resemblance, but it is further enhanced by generous helping of Missile Command, too. If retro classics serve as S.A.M.’s foundation however, Iron Square have built considerably upon it to create an exceptionally stylish, hyper-modernized, twitchy shmup capable of giving you the sort of visceral, cathartic endorphine rush that shmup fans crave.