Vanguard Ace certainly is impressive on a technical level! It's a vertical shoot-em-up with lots of fancy planes, tanks, and other things to blow up; it's claimed to be "Malaysia's first PC arcade game". There are bullets flying everywhere and powerups for you to collect to improve you weapon. Multiple difficulty levels help players that aren't as good at shooters (like me ...) since it seems nearly impossible to avoid getting hit sometimes. It's visually impressive with its pre-rendered graphics, and it may seem to be on the level with other classic DOS shooters like Raptor. But the gameplay needs some tweaks. Although it plays very fluidly with no slowdown, it actually seems like it plays a bit too fast, and the action gets monotonous, mainly sweeping from left to right and back across the screen shooting everything and hoping not to get hit! This demo version includes the first level from the full game including the end-level boss.
9/4/2024