Fly through the sky! Rain down fire on the enemy forces from above! Enjoy solid combat and simple non-linear exploration in this high flying side-scrolling action shooter!
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This game has some excellent moments, but also coupled with some really wacky bugs and some unintuitive design choices.
First, the bad.
Controller bindings are awkward because Shot/Accept are mapped to the same button and Jump/Cancel are mapped to the same button. This might be awkward for keyboard players too, but I didn't play with a keyboard so that wasn't a thing for me.
After a while, I started having the game bug out in very strange ways. At one point, I went into a room in Area 4 and I think there was supposed to be a cutscene, but the door closed before I finished walking in and the screen just went black before depositing me in Area 5. While it was black, I got a message that didn't completely finish. After I was able to gain control again in Area 5, that same message repeated. After that, any items I picked up no longer contained text info, nor did any new logs I found.
In addition, the boost ability from the rocket sometimes spazzes out hard. This is horrible when you're going over scores of hazards at once and when combined with the very sparse set of checkpoints in some areas, this can be a nightmare.
Wait, but the checkpoints heal you, right? Nope. You can save your progress with AS LITTLE HEALTH AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY HAVE. Which means if you make a single save file and aren't paying attention and save with a sliver of health left, you better hope you get some energy farmed from some enemies in a nearby room, assuming you're not stuck between two hazard areas.
But let's talk about the good. The bosses are pretty fun, actually. Nothing spectacular, but they manage to require you to do some fancy footwork and use your booster in a lot of cases to avoid damage.
The weapon variety is okay, but I found myself mostly just sticking with two of the weapons I found because one was extremely accurate and one was extremely powerful -- in both cases, this was for bosses exclusively.
Why? Because of the one GREAT thing in this game. The drill weapon/power-up/gating ability. It's SO STRONG and most enemies don't damage you on contact. As a result, you can just hold the shoot button and run/boost right into enemies to annihilate them en masse. And sometimes there will be boatloads of enemies on the screen, so it's a spectacular feeling when they're trying to get distance between you and them so they can fire and you just boost right through them like the ultimate lancer machine. And since the game allows for eight-way aiming with your weapons, you can drill through the air while jumping and aim down and just glide right into enemies like the monster you always wanted to be. For all the grief I got from the rest of the game, smashing through hordes was wonderful and for that reason alone, this game deserves three stars.
Get it on sale and make sure to use that drill like a champ. It's god-tier fun.
First, the bad.
Controller bindings are awkward because Shot/Accept are mapped to the same button and Jump/Cancel are mapped to the same button. This might be awkward for keyboard players too, but I didn't play with a keyboard so that wasn't a thing for me.
After a while, I started having the game bug out in very strange ways. At one point, I went into a room in Area 4 and I think there was supposed to be a cutscene, but the door closed before I finished walking in and the screen just went black before depositing me in Area 5. While it was black, I got a message that didn't completely finish. After I was able to gain control again in Area 5, that same message repeated. After that, any items I picked up no longer contained text info, nor did any new logs I found.
In addition, the boost ability from the rocket sometimes spazzes out hard. This is horrible when you're going over scores of hazards at once and when combined with the very sparse set of checkpoints in some areas, this can be a nightmare.
Wait, but the checkpoints heal you, right? Nope. You can save your progress with AS LITTLE HEALTH AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY HAVE. Which means if you make a single save file and aren't paying attention and save with a sliver of health left, you better hope you get some energy farmed from some enemies in a nearby room, assuming you're not stuck between two hazard areas.
But let's talk about the good. The bosses are pretty fun, actually. Nothing spectacular, but they manage to require you to do some fancy footwork and use your booster in a lot of cases to avoid damage.
The weapon variety is okay, but I found myself mostly just sticking with two of the weapons I found because one was extremely accurate and one was extremely powerful -- in both cases, this was for bosses exclusively.
Why? Because of the one GREAT thing in this game. The drill weapon/power-up/gating ability. It's SO STRONG and most enemies don't damage you on contact. As a result, you can just hold the shoot button and run/boost right into enemies to annihilate them en masse. And sometimes there will be boatloads of enemies on the screen, so it's a spectacular feeling when they're trying to get distance between you and them so they can fire and you just boost right through them like the ultimate lancer machine. And since the game allows for eight-way aiming with your weapons, you can drill through the air while jumping and aim down and just glide right into enemies like the monster you always wanted to be. For all the grief I got from the rest of the game, smashing through hordes was wonderful and for that reason alone, this game deserves three stars.
Get it on sale and make sure to use that drill like a champ. It's god-tier fun.