Reviewed: November 11, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Alawar Entertainment

Developer
Adept Studios

Released: November 3, 2004
Genre: Shooter
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

6
7
6
8
7.2

System Requirements

The first thing you’ll notice is that enemies don’t die with a single shot. Each enemy has a shield, or armor, or some type of protective field that is represented by a blue health bar above each ship. You must deplete this bar before the ship actually explodes. Smaller ships go down fairly fast, but some of the larger ships can take a real beating before they blow apart.

In the fine tradition of progressive gameplay, each new level brings new enemies, weapons, and power-ups. The clusters of sideways moving ships are soon joined by bombers and fighters that snake around the screen in ever-changing formations. Some fire lasers, others drop bombs or explode in a geometric pattern of spiky mines or shiny ninja star projectiles. Combined with some flashy multi-colored explosions and particle debris from the exploding ships, it can get quite confusing at times.

As the lone defenders of the cosmos, your ship can be upgraded throughout the game by collecting the various power-ups that slowly sink toward the bottom of the screen as you destroy the enemy. You might be surprised to find you only have one ship to play the game with, but you’ll be just as surprised to see how long this one ship can last.

Your ship has various levels of armor, plus each time you pick-up a weapon upgrade you get extra protection. When you get hit you’ll lose one of your weapon upgrades and subsequent piece of armor, but only when all of these are gone will your ship explode and the game end. My first game lasted 32 levels and my most recent session took me to level 50 where I was finally defeated by the boss.

Along the way you will collect a variety of new weapons that spray their fire out at angles or increase to double-shot or increase the fire rate. These are added to your ship’s arsenal and all fire with the primary fire key. You also have secondary weapons including direct-fire missiles that take down an enemy with a single hit despite their shields. There are also temporary weapon upgrades that will give you added firepower for a 20-second countdown.

Control is as simple as the gameplay and you can choose from mouse, keyboard, or gamepad. You basically move side-to-side and fire one of two possible weapons. It doesn’t get any easier than this. I opted for mouse control, which seemed a bit more accurate than the keyboard and more accessible than digging out my gamepad.

The game is divided into two episodes. Each episode has numerous missions that consist of ten levels each. The odd thing is that when you start each new mission the first level strips you of all your weapons and the enemies return to their basic slow-moving formations. It’s almost like starting from scratch every 10-15 minutes.

The difficulty ramps up throughout the ten levels leading to a climactic boss level that features a huge enemy ship and numerous waves of smaller enemies, or sometimes just a lengthy level with numerous waves of ships. To make these final battles more exciting (or difficult) is that you are relieved of all missiles.

Ship design is unique and often quite alien. You have your traditional wedge-shaped fighters then you have some metallic blob-like ships and some scary skull ships with batwings. These models all exhibit a metallic sheen and even some primitive lighting and shadow effects depending on their tilt and movement.

Your ship is equally as well designed with twin weapon pods and a nose cannon. The power-ups, whether they are a cluster of rockets, a spinning coin, or a standard hexagon weapon upgrade all look great and are easy to identify, even in the chaotic wash of special effects that dominate the screen at any given time.

The HUD is clean and kept to the side where it displays your ship status, score, secondary weapons, invulnerability timer, and an insert headshot of your pilot.

My singular complaint with the game is the lack of backgrounds. After 50 levels I have only seen a scrolling star field for the normal levels and a scrolling grid of pipes and conduit, perhaps a space station, for the boss levels. Some diversity in the backgrounds would have kept this game a bit fresher, especially in light of the repetitious gameplay.

The music is awesome, some futuristic trance and techno beats that really drive the action. It’s the same style music you might be familiar with if you are into the “mod scene” - you know, those graphics and sound demos those 15-year old kids over in Norway create using 64kb or less. Honestly, the music blends into the game so well I can’t even tell you if there is more than one song. It may be looping but the music is so good that even after 6 hours of play (not all at once) it still hasn’t gotten old or annoying.

$20 is more than a fair price for this outstanding shooter. Whether you are six or sixty, you can enjoy this simply, yet challenging and totally addicting game in small doses or for extended marathon sessions. Its design allows you to unlock levels then come back later and pick-up where you left off.