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Rally Raid continues the tradition of excellent, commercial-quality shareware vertical shooters from Japan. Beautiful 3D graphics create a great illusion of depth in a 2D playing field, anime-style ship designs are excellent, and your ship's power-ups and weapons are nicely varied. Make no mistake about it, though: Rally Raid is *very difficult* – you will often find yourself trapped between so many bursts of bullets from swarms of enemies that it seems impossible not to get hit. The action is non-stop, although the frequency of power-ups is generous. I find myself dying every five or so minutes, yet the game has that elusive "just one more try" quality to make me grit my teeth and keep going until the finish. Rally Raid shares the same weakness as many other freeware shooters: it is a tad too brief, with each level lasting only a few minutes each. Fortunately, the high difficulty level and unpredictable patterns of enemy ship movements lengthen the actual play time. Overall, Rally Raid is a definite must-play for anyone who enjoys vertical shooters, and well worth the price of a full version, although it doesn't boast the same (i.e. very high) production values as Idinaloq, my favorite freeware shooter from Japan. Note: look for the full version which should have eight levels in total. Reviewed by: Underdogs | 
Rally Raid 
