Pixel Ranger

Poor Pixel Ranger. As if he wasn’t having a bad enough day seeing his horse and wife abducted by extra terrestrials, now he’s forced to fight a full-on invasion (both from above and below). Unfortunately, instead of conventional weaponry, he fires bits of himself — pixels — and dies when they run out. Happily, he can collect pixels dropped by downed aliens. Less happily, the game’s controls are so awkward that we’d initially planned a review consisting of the word ‘ARGH!’ repeated 160 times, but we persevered…

We’re glad we did, because Pixel Ranger is a great-looking game that — annoying controls aside — is good fun, rewarding players willing and able to adjust tactics when tackling new levels. But tilt to move and directional fire (that demands you hit multiple targets with single shots to survive) and tap to jump too often feels like juggling while already juggling. This drags the game down from a must-have to a guarded recommendation.