PixelShips Retro
What do you get if you cross Pokemon with Defender? Pokender? Defemon? A little yellow twat being blown to smithereens? Hmm, maybe some of the above, but you also get Pixelships Retro, the sequel to … well, Pixelships obviously.
Pixelships Retro is a concept that looks great on paper, a wraparound scrolling shooter where the aim is to clear off the goals presented to you each level, be that collecting the correct amount of coins, destroying x amount of enemy ships before the time limit ends in order to spawn a boss ship that you destroy, then get the ability to play.
Each boss ship has different qualities and brings its own pro’s and con’s to the table - some may move slower, some have firepower which diminishes in strength faster than others and so on and so forth. The more levels you clear off, the more ships available to you and the more you have chance to juggle the balance in your favour - each ship also has its own experience levels enabling you to upgrade the current ship as it hits the top of the experience scale.
So, indeed - a fairly solid and reasonable concept behind the whole game. Shame its not so wonderful in practice.
Its by no means a bad game or a poorly coded game… its just dull to play.
The enemy patterns are bland - they swoop around the screen occasionally arcing when within range of your ship, maybe doubling back if you’re lucky, firing out the odd bullet (which due to all the ships you pilot having energy levels, you can take huge amounts of hits from and still continue). So there’s next to no threat level at all. Even when you progress through the boss ships the patterns remain so similar as to not really ever be enough to retain interest for long. The collecting ships does add a little more “umph” to it, but for the most part - its only ones obsessive compulsive nature that could possibly drive anyone to “catch ‘em all”.
Its something that appears to be a reasonably common theme amongst some shooters, and especially rearing its head within the shareware market more than it should… whereas the absolute focus should lie in good enemy design, wave structures and/or threat balancing and risk/reward… so many of them take the base concept of “well, we’ve got a player and umm…lets throw a few enemies in without really thinking too hard about structuring their behaviour” that you wonder sometimes if half the people writing these games have ever played and enjoyed a shooter in their lives.
And the graphics? Pixelships Retro appears to run with the principle of only having the barest minimum of effort employed in the graphics department and then passing them off as old skool. Whereas I may have railed against the gameplay of Gamma Bros, they nailed the retro stylings down to an absolute tee with absolutely luscious sprites that show PixelShips Retro up at every turn.
The sound is nicely done, although having only been able to try the demo version out I appear to be stuck with an incredibly limited selection of music (possibly only the one track, but that might just be that it all blurs into one - so don’t quote me on that) - either way, there’s no Hubbard style epics to be found here but what is there is competent enough, if nothing special in the grand scheme of things
It all adds up to one major problem the game suffers - if it were a true retro game it would have been thrown out for a few quid on Mastertronic or Firebird - a nice distraction of a game, but never anything with much in the way of longevity. At $12.95 for the full version I’m not entirely convinced that any of the extra content on offer for upgrading from the demo justifies the price tag. When there’s a world of excellent shooters out there which either cost less, or cost nothing at all bar the time to download them, why cough up for something that barely scrapes its way out of the idea’s camp?
What could have been something a bit special has ended up as a husk of a game that feels like its trying to eek more playtime out of you with the collection mechanism rather than encouraging you to get bigger, better and more ships to control and use to blow seven shades of holy shit out of everything.
And we all know, that in a shooter - its the blowing shit out of things that matters.
Quantized Blaze
A tad late to the party, with Quantized Blaze having already been covered by The2Bears way back in April and somehow managing to let it pass me by, until Tim over at indygamer.blogspot.com dropped this post a few days ago and reminded me of its existence.
By the same developer as the utterly mentalist NomltestFS and the superbly stylish Invisible Vision, keim, comes a game that shows that a little bit of additive blending goes a long way. With the action taking place on an eternally scrolling chequer board with flames bursting down from the top of the screen and interweaving lines forming patterns across the screen, even if the game isn’t for you - its sure to provide at the very least a wonderful visual treat.
Like NomltestFS, Quantized Blaze is essentially a play on the Space Invaders style dragged by the little green tentacles into the 21st century, the enemies move across the chequerboard spitting bullets in a variety of patterns - with the patterns getting increasingly complex as you progress through the ranks. What begins as bullets dropping down in a straight line and heading in your direction soon becomes a barrage of formations for you to duck and dive between.
To encourage more aggressive playing, when you destroy the flames barely visible items are spewed out from the explosions for you to collect. The further towards the bottom of the screen you lie, the more difficult it becomes to get a good stock of items. Your ship also comes packed with the obligatory supply of smart bombs - best to keep a hold of them wherever possible though, you’ll find yourself needing them when the going gets tougher later on.
Whilst the game is incredibly straightforward, the whole visual style has a very odd effect on my eyes after a while - its rare a game makes me go cross eyed whilst nipping inbetween bullet patterns, but the slight perspective of Quantized Blaze means I have to relax that little bit more to get into the zone with it. Luckily this is helped along the way by a fantastic use of sound - spot FX are kept to a bare minimum but the tune trips away nicely in the foreground helping you drift into the right state of mind.
Very enjoyable and frantic, without getting too stressful - and as Tim recommends, definitely not one for keyboard play. Pack your pad or stick for this beauty.
Gridrunner++
One of my greatest non family based fears, is that one day I’ll wake up, I’ll look at the world and no longer care about games. Having been a gamer since the age of 7, and with barely a day gone by since where I haven’t had a blast at something - its a scary thought that your life long love may one day wane.
Gridrunner++ is, fortunately, a constant reminder that for every substandard clone or desperate money grabbing pile of utter turd that inexplicably floats to the top of the pile, there’s always going to be one of the most beautifully designed games in existance out there… the day technology reaches the point whereby I have GR++ taken away from me, may well just be the day I stop upgrading until we all raid Jeffs house and force him at gunpoint to make it work again under whatever level of technology we may have reached at that point.
Its also very rare for me to care for a game as much as I do for Gridrunner++. Its not by any means for the faint of heart when it comes to shooting kicks - if being arseraped by a giant smiley face isn’t your thing, then I suggest you head on over to World Of Spectrum and download Advanced Lawnmower Simulator or something a little less strenuous. It may not have the brutality of something like Fren-Ze, it may not have the visuals of where Jeffs heading now, but what it has in absolute bucketloads is a love of the genre, a respect for the player and heart poundingly intense but fair gameplay.
Its also one of the only games in existence where the advice “always keep a sheep beneath you” is sound advice.
There’s very little I can say really that probably hasn’t been said a million times before, better than I no doubt - but a world without Gridrunner++ would be a sad world indeed. So whilst the rest of the world waits for Space Giraffe to emerge, and NeonPC to raise its head from distribution hell - I’ll be waiting patiently, with Gridrunner++ as my companion until then.
And, whilst GR++ still exists, I’ll still care.
Blit Me Up, Before You Go Go
So, Blitwise have let slip a few details of what a mysterious new “shooter” from them may involve…
“For the record… it’s an arcade game. Imagine taking a modern computer, with this game installed, back in time to 1982 and dropping it in an arcade. It would fit right in with games like Centipede, Defender, Joust, etc…. The input for the game would be a trackball and one fire button.
Of course, the player’s jaw would hit the ground when they saw the graphics, but the graphical style and gameplay would fit right in to the arcade environment.
BTW - There are stars in the background, but whether folks consider it a space shooter is up for debate. There’s lots of shooting… but not like you’d expect. hehe”
I wonder what it could be? Could it perhaps be….nah, not saying. You’ll just have to wait to find out.
Check out the info so far on their forums, no screenies so far - its all a bit hush hush etc…
Fren-ze
One of the great joys of reading The2Bears excellent blog is getting reasonably up to the minute news on the latest shmup releases (odd considering its the main focus of his blog - who’da thought it?), so it was with much pleasure a few nights ago I read of the release of Hermit Games latest opus, Fren-ze.
There are very few Indie releases that have ever pressed such an urgent need to push the buy button after a few brief moments playing the demo before, Fren-ze joins the hallowed few with pride. Partially due to being an utterly wonderful game and partly for having one of the most insanely low price points I’ve hit upon in a while. (Pretty much on par with The Pickfords excellent Naked War for value for money) Running in at a daft $5 for the full 4 level game its an absolute bargain.
4 levels? Is that all? Don’t be fooled - this is definitely a case of quality over quantity. Its also, a brutally hard game that positively revels in kicking your arse from here to kingdom come… which would be a problem if the game wasn’t so carefully and lovingly crafted to near perfection. Looks wise, it mimics the Aba Games clean vector stylings, which by now, you might have gathered I’m a sucker for a lovely retromodern style so it most definitely appeals to my eyes.
The game involves traversing increasingly difficult patterns of bullets and a variety of enemy styles, beating the mid level bosses for power ups and generally, attempting to stay alive and score as highly as possible - all the hallmarks of a fine shooter then. Now, the scoring in Fren-ze is a little bit different to what you’re used to and is based on earning 1 point per pick up pushing you ever onwards to pick up the blue glowy things that the enemies leave behind in a vain hope to break the three figure mark on the scores.
All told, a beautifully polished game with gorgeous visuals and a spankingly harsh difficulty level that never feels unfair.
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