Dial the clocks back to early December of 2015 and developer Art in Games released AirAttack 2 (Free), a sequel to their incredibly well-recieved 2010 vertical shoot ’em up. There was little warning of AirAttack 2’s arrival, and as such it took both our community and our staff by storm as it proved to be one of the most visually impressive and refreshing shooters available on mobile. We awarded it 5 stars in our review as well as Game of the Week honors. And, despite releasing so close to the end of the year, AirAttack 2 made enough of an impression on us that we included it in our Best Games of 2015 as well. In short, AirAttack 2 is really, really good!

Anyway, it’s been more than a year since that initial release, and as great as AirAttack 2 was it did have some minor issues that needed to be addressed. Art in Games was quite active in our forums following the game’s release, and laid out some plans they had for a big update to the game. That was all the way in March of last year though, and with radio silence from Art in Games since last June it started to feel like the update would never come at all. Well, much like its initial release today that long-awaited update arrived out of nowhere, and adds in some very nifty new features. One of those is support for horizontal orientation in addition to portrait, and you can see the lovely widescreen-ness of it all in this new trailer.

When switching over to landscape mode the game warns you that it’s more taxing on your device to play that way, and that leads to the next new feature in this update: The ability to adjust the graphical intensity in order to get a smoother experience and/or save on battery life. This should be especially welcome for anyone who might be playing on older devices. There’s also some new options for button layouts, and in what I’m sure will be music to many gamers’ ears, AirAttack 2 now supports MFi controllers. Finally, there are 4 new types of daily events, though mine currently seem to not be refreshing so I’m not sure what they are just yet. Hopefully that sorts itself out. Anyway, while it’s much later than anybody ever imagined it would be, I’m very excited to see an update for AirAttack 2 and it gives me a reason to dive back into this modern classic. If you haven’t checked it out previously, this is a good opportunity to do just that if you’re a fan of fancy graphics and frantic shooter action.