Hella fun but does have some minor issues.
It's fast, it's fun, and it reminds me a lot of Ace Combat. The game is basically just one long fight to see how long you can last like the old retro-arcade games. And the game gives you plenty of targets that go up in lethality as you play from weak Viper jets that can go down in one missile to aggressive space ships with missiles to spare. This isn't a game you play to see the end of a story (btw there's no story, it's just ALL gameplay) this is a game you play to get the top score on. And I love it.
That said, there are a few minor issues with the game. For one, you have a lives system, if you take too much damage, you will lose a life. You can mitigate this by, well, either upgrading your jet or getting gud but I did notice that no where on the HUD did it remind you how many lives you still had. Now, you COULD argue that this encourages the player not to play recklessly, but you could also argue the opposite for it too considering if we can't see how many times we're allowed to mess up, we'll forget how we've messed up already and die before we realize we're out of lives.
There's also kind of an issue where enemy missiles have a tendency to be inconsistently accurate. Some enemy missiles you can strafe around without worry, others will be on you like bloodhounds. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe we had unique target indicators to tell which were threats and which weren't, but since all missiles have the same indicator, you don't have much choice but to treat them all like a threat.
And another gripe I have, the game does not tell you when you're low on health. I mean sure, it's there on your HUD but most other fighter jet games have an alarm or something that goes off to warn you that you're in serious danger and need to start playing more cautiously. Top Dog, for whatever reason, doesn't have that. And in a super-fast paced game, you need to keep your eyes on the ball so having to check every time you cut it close how much health you have is uhh... not what I would call good game design.
Graphically, the game is nothing to write home about, but that's no big deal. This game was designed first and foremost to be fun and they accomplished that with flying colours. I do however don't care much for the music (of which as far as I've played only really plays on the main menu). There's also no customisation, I guess due to the fact that some of the upgrades to change the look of your jet. Which is fair enough.
Overall, 9/10. Super solid game with some minor but otherwise easy-to-get-around issues.
