If you have ever played a shmup then AngerForce - Strikers will hold few surprises. It's a familiar story: a series of vertically-scrolling levels which have you tracing your craft's path a halestorm of bullets, trying to destroy any enemies in your way.

AngerForce you offers three characters to choose from, each with their own special attacks. Which you select will be dependent on your play style, with characters like the robot offering powerful laser attacks that do huge damage, while others focus more on defence. All moves can be conveniently unleashed using either the onscreen buttons or a selection of taps and multi-touch commands, letting you pick the interface that works for you.

Enemies have an almost toy like quality against AngerForce’s vibrant anime world. 2.5D backgrounds add to this visual flare, allowing tanks appear from behind buildings in urban areas and to submarines emerge from oceans. Its a dramatic effect, but with so much going on it can become muddled on smaller screens making it hard to keep up with all the action.

Boss fights punctuate each level with huge sprites that half fill the screen. Our favourite of these is the massive tank that when beaten ejects a robotic escape pod to continue the fight, before exploding into a shower or coins.

Unfortunately, while AngerForce is a solid shooter, its business model completely undermines it. It is a premium title, but every time you want to continue a run you have to pay. It costs 100 of the game's in-app currency to continue the first time, then 400, followed by 900, which was when we ran out and were told we could purchase more. It could arguably be called the most arcady aspect of the game, but the prices increase so fast that they quickly become extortionate.

AngerForce - Strikers is an attractive shmup, but its pay model means that only the best players will see the whole game. While this could be a complaint leveled at the whole genre, here it feels like a deliberate attempt to gouge money from players, rather than to offer challenge. Were it free-to-play we would say give it a shot, but as a premium title, this is best avoided.