Easy games can be fun -- let's get that out of the way -- but Arrow Flash's normal mode is the bad kind of easy: devoid of even the pretense of challenge. You will sit in an empty frame, firing to the right, and once every 5-10 seconds a wave of enemies will come crashing into your bullets, wholly unable to retaliate. You may find yourself dying because your focus floats away to, perhaps, what's for lunch -- and in that regard the "Normal" mode might be the more difficult one here after all.

Bump it up to "Hard," and things get a little, but not that much, more interesting. You have to deal more consistently with enemy fire, though there are still long bouts of nothingness scattered throughout the game's 5 stages. And, adding a frosting of genuine brokenness on top of this cakewalk, you have a special move that makes you invincible and able to run into enemies and bosses for massive damage. The activations of this move are handed out plentifully in the game's "Stock" mode, and in "Charge" mode they're infinite.

So is all of that to say that this is a bad shooting game? Actually, no. It's an aggressively alright one: there's nothing actively frustrating about it beyond the boredom that can ocassionally set in, which the hard mode alleviates enough, at least in my book; and the mechanics it offers (swapping from mech to ship for two different option-behaviors, the aforementioned kamikaze-mode) are enough to provide a fun, if extremely-basic, run to the finish.

If it weren't also nice to look at and listen to, it might get two stars... but fortunately that's not the case. The sprites and cinematics are cool and decently unique (more cartoony than in many stgs), and the music ocassionally got my head bobbing.

It's ok! It's fine! Check it out for an alright, not bad time!