December 06, 2004 - Shooter are the eternal genre of video games. Blowing stuff up is always a simple pleasure -- but for some reason, it's also one of the easiest game play staples to screw up. And Icarus manages to melt its own wings, thanks to Zzz-inducing action and uninteresting enemies.

To be fair, though, the shooter genre is not exactly the easiest to tackle on handsets. Without the ability to accept multiple button inputs, maneuvering through the stars while unleashing a hail of laserfire requires either stop-and-go movement or a reliance on auto-fire. Each solution really up-ends the essence of a shooter, but there have been a few blasters that found a happy middle ground.

As you can guess, Icarus does not. It's not that this is a bad game. It's just medicore. A shooter with no heart, just a trigger finger and a sky full of bland baddies. You can switch on auto-fire and spray the heavens to make the journey much easier, allowing you to concentrate solely on bullet evasion. And you'll be spending plenty of time doing that against the mini-boss ships that blow you out with fat plasma balls and small torrents of bullets.

Fortunately, Icarus isn't a single-hit affair. Your ship has shields that allow you to sustain several attacks before exploding into space debris. And there are also some power-ups, such as triple-shots and shield-replenishment, that make the skies a safer place.

Icarus is decidedly average to look at. Your ship design is "meh" and the majority of your targets are equally blah. The game does spit a looping jingle that is easy on the ears, though.