Let’s clear one thing up: there is no Glory Days 1. While Glory Days was the project name, the title was released as Super Army War. With the sequel, I can’t blame Eidos for switching the name back to the original. Either way, gameplay is king, and whatever this game’s called, it has a simple charm that makes it worth playing.

In Glory Days 2, players take control of an aircraft in a side-scrolling battle for territory. The small tasks vary from rescuing civilians to bombing enemy units, but the inevitable goal is to push back the opposing forces, taking control of all the territory. There’s also a tactical element to the game, with deployment of troops put under the user’s control.

The gameplay seems fresh in today’s gaming climate, but it bears a striking resemblance to 8-bit favorite Choplifter. The game’s feel is a bit different, as it feels clean and bloodless but still has a tone of military reverence. Between each level in the campaign, the game shows and narrates a fictional letter from a soldier to home. This is a strange thing to include, but it manages to give the otherwise story-deprived title some emotion.

The game includes touch-screen controls, but they’re mostly clunky, so most will end up reverting to the d-pad-and-buttons option for a while. The graphics, while not magnificent, get the job done well, and the orchestral score makes the experience feel grand.

The campaign mode, while well-done, ends much more quickly than it should. There are options for regular play, but it doesn’t make up for this shortcoming. A nice addition, though, is the game’s multiplayer. With a relatively rare title like this, download play would have been nice, but the multi-card play is deep enough to warrant convincing a friend to pick this up too.

All in all, Glory Days 2 is great fun. It’s a bit short, but if it finds enough of a following, the sequel could get the budget to make the experience a bit more fleshed out.