X3F hands-on: Aegis Wing (play it with friends)

Let's get this out of the way right now: if you can avoid it, do not play Aegis Wing alone. Single-player Aegis Wing is almost a complete misrepresentation of the fun that can be had. With that out of the way, we can discuss Aegis Wing, the latest alien-blasting, bullet-dodging, arcade shooter from Microsoft. Sure, there's a story in there. In fact, you'll even get little written snippets of plot between levels. Let's face it though, the point is to shoot everything that moves, and Aegis Wing has that in spades.

As shooters go, Aegis Wing is fairly basic, you have one main cannon and several limited secondary weapon power-ups. At first, we were disappointed that the main weapon could not be upgraded. The reasoning behind this became clear once we started a multiplayer session, but we'll discuss that later. There are many different secondary weapons that can be found by destroying enemies. The laser (picture below) destroys everything in a straight line, including tougher enemies and otherwise indestructible asteroids. The missile weapon fires multiple heat-seeking missles, which comes in handy when barraged by multiple enemies. The shield power-up creates a shield that deflects bullets. These deflected bullets will destroy enemies, too. Finally, there is a power-up that creates a sort of electromagnetic field that stops bullets and causes enemy ships to lose control, rendering them helpless and making them easy targets.

Now, as we've noted above, this game needs to be played with friends. The multiplayer mode, to put it mildly, is a blast. First of all, your firepower goes up drastically thanks to more bullets being fired at once. Second, being able to distribute power-ups among multiple people adds more strategic depth. The killer feature, however, is the linking system. Whenever you are close to a friend, you can link to him by hitting X. This essentially turns your ship into a turret on your buddy's ship. He steers and you shoot (unless he links to you, in which case it's the other way around). The advantage here is that turrets can shoot in any direction. Meanwhile, the "main" ship can still only fire in one direction. Add more ships and you get more turrets. Once you build up to the ultimate 4-person ship, you've got some serious firepower.

If that were all linking did, it would still be a great feature, but it does even more than that. As you link to other players, the power of your secondary weapons increases exponentially. Two linked ships will shoot twice as many missiles, or create an electromagnetic field twice as big. If you can link up all four ships, secondary weapons become nigh unstoppable. Of course, secondary weapons are limited, so you can't stay linked forever. Also, the main ship becomes slower and less maneuverable as more ships link to it. Still, watching all four ships link together to unleash a massive, screen-clearing laser is an awesome experience. In one play session this morning, we managed to obliterate a boss in seconds using linked ships (don't get cocky though, bosses get meaner as you reach later levels).

The linking mechanic positively makesAegis Wing. It fosters teamwork and keeps players from hogging power-ups. After all, it's better if each player has a different power-up when linked, as that adds to the offensive and defensive capabilities of the super ship. Of course, playing with your buddies is just good fun anyway, and Aegis Wing offers up plenty of cool moments that are fun to share with friends. For instance, making that complicated maneuver and dodging every single oncoming bullet is even cooler when you know your friend saw it too. At a reasonable price, Aegis Wing would be easy to recommend. As a free download, you owe it to yourself to add Aegis Wing to your Live Arcade library.