Astrostorm is a well polished first person shooter game, a cross between asteroids and starmaster. It comes in a professionally made box with an excellently made instruction manual. Astrostorm comes with four different modes of play, campaign mode, skirmish mode, and arcade shoot and arcade fly mode. In campaign mode you have 40 levels of play starting with level one and going in order to level 40. On the upper left side of the screen you have a "command monitor" that tells you in what color order you must shoot the rocks to rack up the most bonus points, which becomes very difficult in latter rounds when the different color rocks are flying in all directions. On the lower left side of the screen is your gun temperature gauge. You can't just hold down the fire button and shoot every thing on the screen or your gun will overheat and temporarily stop working, which reduces your shield strength in the process. Which is the main point of this game. Everything reduces your shield strength. When your shield strength reaches zero you automatically die. So your number one priority is to keep recharging your shields. After every two shooting rounds you go to a flying round where you have to fly your ship through a series of green gates, while avoiding asteriods that are coming right towards you. When you successfully maneuver your ship through these gates you partially recharge your shields. In the latter rounds, I found it difficult to know exactly where these gates are, if the gate is not visible on the screen I found it difficult to know exactly which direction to fly my ship to pass through these gates. In round three, the bonus red rocks appear. Once these rocks are destroyed, bonus items will appear on the screen. I found it most helpful to just concentrate on the shield repair bonus, as this is the most important bonus to keep you alive. It is also very important to concentrate on shooting the red rocks when they appear, because after destroying five red rocks, you gain another ship. As you are concentrating on shooting all these rocks in the proper order then the alien ship appears. There are 10 different alien ships, all with different powers that will affect your ship or the rocks around you in different ways. Overall this is an excellent challenging game. I did, however, find myself wanting a little more in the campaign mode. Maybe a map screen like in starmaster, where you can see your progress against the alien hordes. I also thought it would have been a nice touch If you was able to shoot the asteroids in the flying mode instead of just dodging them.
*helpfull hint*. After the third shooting screen, leave one rock left and let the red rock appear, then destroy it to regain shield strength and to get closer to an extra ship. On most levels you can do this one, two, or even three times. Just keep an eye on your shield strength level.