After a soft launch period that began in February, Gameloft’s free-to-play class-based shooter Blitz Brigade (Free) has now been officially launched in the App Store. Originally announced in January, Blitz Brigade feels like the lovechild of Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield Heroes. It’s a lighthearted kind of game, as opposed to the gritty, realistic nature of most shooters nowadays. Despite not being an entirely original concept, I’m actually surprised with how much fun Blitz Brigade has been so far.

As you’d expect, it’s pretty freemium’d out, but not really in a gross or unfair way. It looks like you’ll be able to earn everything the game has to offer just by playing, or if you’re impatient or otherwise just don’t mind dropping a few dollars on in-game currency you can purchase packs of gems to spend on basically anything in the game. The part that’s annoying is that Gameloft takes every chance possible to let you know you could be spending that gem currency, so it’s pretty in your face, but at least it doesn’t appear to gate any of the content from you outright.

It’s sad that so much time need to be dedicated to explaining how a game’s pay model works, but that stuff aside Blitz Brigade is pretty darn cool. It looks nice, it plays well, and it’s fun. The main dish is of course its online multiplayer, but there’s also a good deal of single player missions to work your way through that’ll pretty much walk you through all the different aspects of the game and its characters. The online connection has been a bit iffy but seems solid for the most part. If you’ve played any other Gameloft shooter you pretty much know what to expect.

I’ll be spending the weekend playing some more of Blitz Brigade to dig in further, but I have to admit I’m pleasantly surprised with it so far, and our forum goers seem to be digging it as well. It’s free so give it a look if you’ve been waiting for this type of shooter to hit your iOS device.