App A Day: MetalStorm Wingman

Do you love airplanes? Are you an air fanatic? Do you want to shoot down enemy fighters while you’re partnered up with your best friend? If you answered yes to those questions, then you HAVE to try this game.

Metalstorm: Wingman is the successor to the highly successful game Metalstorm: Online. It is a highly addictive flight combat simulator which offers a wide range of gamers the ability to pilot their very own fighter jet. The game is fairly simple to play. At the very basic level, you have to shoot down enemy planes with missles and cannons. You control your aircraft by tilting your iDevice in the desired direction of flight. The on screen controls allow you to fire your weapons, control the speed of your jet, change the camera view and pause the game. You can also swipe the screen in any direction and have your plane perform an advanced evasive maneuver in that direction.

The game offers players a variety of aircraft to purchase, as well as a detailed tech tree for each. Players also have the option of equipping their aircraft from a wide arsenal of missles and cannons.

While these features alone would have made the game quite nice, what makes it truly amazing are its multiple game modes. You have the standard campaign and single player modes but there is also a multiplayer ‘verses ‘ mode as well as a ‘Co-Op survival mode’. What this means is that you can play a game verses your friend and blow his plane to bits, or you could team up with them and see how many waves you can survive as wingmen together. Did we happen to mention that there’s a little icon that pops up in the corner of your screen in multiplayer games? It lets you talk to your wingman/opponent while you’re in-game. Multiplayer in Metalstorm is achieved through the Game Center. It works flawlessly (during numerous tests) over both WiFi and 3G, with players in the same room or across the world.

But wait! There’s More! Do you have a nice, big, shiny and sleek TV in your room? Yes! Ever wanted to play a game from your phone on that big TV? Yes! Do you happen to also have an Apple TV? Yes! All you have to do is connect the Apple TV and your iPad 2/iPhone 4s/iPod Touch and start AirPlay Mirroring. Congratulations. You’re now ready to play Metalstorm: Wingman in 720p on your TV. While the screen is being mirrored, the game shows the inside of a cockpit on your device’s screen, which adds to the coolness of the entire experience.

The only feature of this game that we did not like was the fact that you have to be online to play it, either over WiFi or 3G. You cannot play this game without a connection. Not even single player mode. We can hope that they will disable this feature in a future update.

So how much does this game cost? Nothing. Its free to download and free to play. There are various in-app purchases available for various coin packages to easily help you to upgrade your plane, restock your weapons and even buy an all new plane.

Here’s hoping to see you in the skies someday. God speed. And Good Luck.