WiiWare is now upon us, and among these titles lies Star Soldier R. How does it hold up? Is there a game shorter than the rather excellent Lost Winds?

To give you a sense of what the game is about for folk who have no idea, it's the classic vertical-scrolling 3D shooter that we all love to play. But does it hold up? There is no lie that the game is extremely fun with so many enemies on the screen at once, you dashing from side to side to evade those pesky attacks and destroying all who oppose you, it only gets better when you start getting score and fire-power enhancing power-ups, and will certainly have you hooked for a while, but for how long will ultimately depend on you, the gamer.

The only lasting appeal of the game is to just get better scores on the Wi-Fi leaderboards to see the best ranking you get, and to improve to get into the top spots. Altogether, there's 2 leaderboards for each Country so you can see how well you can do in your homeland, with the leaderboards for the 2 minute mode and 5 minute mode. Yip, that's what the game has to offer, well there is the 'Quick Shoot' mode where you see how many times you can press the fire button to destroy objects which you get 10 seconds to do. There's only 2 levels in the game, that's it. In 2 minute mode, you play through the first, in the 5 minute mode you play through both and see your total score at the end, and if it's your best score, upload it to the leaderboards. Shortness aside though, it's a fun little game.

Now we'll move onto the actual game instead of lasting appeal. First off, the controls. When you start up the game, you are greeted to 3 control methods. The Wiimote by itself, Wiimote and Nunchuck and finally the Classic Controller. As previously mentioned, the game is certainly fun and addictive with everything going on in the screen and aiming to grab those power ups to become a lean, mean, annihilating machine.

Can you afford to blow 800 Points on less than 7.5 minutes of gameplay?

Throughout the course of the 2 levels, you'll come across a number of capsules. Red Capsules will improve your offensive abilities, resulting in your ship being able to shot more, Blue Capsules will increase your ships "Force" which is a small circular sheild rotating around the ship, or if you want to be even more deadly, set free the sheilds so they can be seperated from the ship and shoot at enemies. There's also Yellow Spheres but that gives you extra points and doesn't improve the ships power, but become all important when trying to get that glorious high score.

The controls are easy to get use to in any mode, mainly due to you only needing 3 buttons for firing, changing the ship's "Force" and the ships speed, then there's the analogue stick/D-pad to move. The more advanced and skillful you get with the game and manoeuvering your ship, then it's time to increase the ship's speed to help destroy more things on the screen to increase your combo count for more bonus points at the end of the mode.

At the end of each level, you go face to face with a boss, which can be done easily assuming you have power ups or take some time if you have next to none and have the risk of the time counter running out and getting a game over and start over again, which you might seeing as you'll want to replay again and get all the power ups you can get and give the boss sweet revenge for killing you.

Star Soldier R is fun for sure and even nice graphics, but if you get bored with games easily, then the same 2 levels will bore you quickly and likely feel cheated out of your money and spending 800 points for a rather thin game that you can complete in under 7 and a half minutes. Hell even the time reading this review will have you done most of the game already. However, if you are a fan of the classic shooters and strive to get great scores, this is a game for you. Reading this or any other review so far will likely have made the decision of whether you're going to download this or not. If Hudson ever decide to do another Star Soldier that has the classic arcade mode with going through levels, then arcade fans rejoice. But for now, this is all we have.