Smashing Planets is a rather entertaining Windows Phone game that is a missile defense styled game. You are required to defend Earth from evil alien invaders that are determined to smash the planet into tiny little bits. Your perspective in the game is from space and you have an arsenal of missiles to take out the alien ships and bosses before they blow things up.
Smashing Planets has over sixteen levels of play, really nice graphics and addictive game play. It's a neat little game that is a very nice time waster. Smashing Planets is a nice addition to your Windows Phone gaming library.
The main menu for Smashing Planets offers options to access the game's settings, play the game and visit the developer's website, Twitter and Facebook pages. Settings cover a help page, mute the sound, and view the Smashing Planet's About page.
Smashing Planets has two game modes, Campaign and Survival. Survival mode is simply surviving the alien attack for as long as you can. Campaign Mode is a multi-level game that has you defeating minions and bosses. Game play gets more challenging the longer you survive in the Survival Mode and the higher the level with the Campaign mode.
Smashing Planets game screen has your weapons displayed along the bottom left of the screen, a radar button in the lower right, your score in the upper right and a pause button in the upper left.
As you move into the gaming modes, a series of story boards and video segments appear giving the background story for the game. Earth sits center screen and a health meter sits below the planet. As alien space craft come up on the radar, warning arrows pop up around Earth to alert you of the direction the ships are coming from.
To fire your missiles, simply drag your finger in the direction you need the missiles to go in. You can curve your shots to hit the enemy from behind, zig zag the shot, or just go with the straight shot. This comes in handy when the ships have forward facing shields.
Along with the alien ships, you have to defend the Earth from incoming asteroids. Asteroids require multiple hits to eliminate the danger. Ships vary in strength and defenses as well. Some can be taken out with one shot, while others take multiple hits. Some can be sneaky and hide behind asteroids, requiring curve shots. Missile inventory/supply can be depleted but factories feverishly work to replenish your arsenals. Additionally, there are bonus items floating in space that will replenish your missiles, restore health to the planet, and other bonus/boosts.
As you progress through the levels in the Campaign mode, additional weapons become available. Just tap on the icon at the bottom of the screen to switch between missile types.
Overall, Smashing Planets is a great game for your Windows Phone. The downside to the game is that there is so much to the game, the help section really doesn't do things justice. I would have liked to have seen a more detail on what each missile type does, what each bonus does, etc. You can figure it all out after a while but there can be "now what does that do?" type moments that can be distracting and give the aliens the upper hand.
Smashing Planets is challenging enough to keep you coming back, graphically well presented, and just an overall good game. There is a free trial version for Smashing Planets that lets you get a feel for the game before buying. The full version of Smashing Planets is running $.99 and you can find it all here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.
