I had a few weeks of school in the cool, yet warm twilight of an April evening. I had a spontaneous and undiagnosable urge to play Astroids, God would only know why.
I booted up the game and just became entranced. My mind was full of questions. Why is the spaceship stuck in between a bunch of astroids? Is help on the way? How long will this situation take? While every arcade game has the secondary goal of simply surviving, surviving is also part of Astroids aesthetic/theme, even the music creates tension and dread. PAC-MAN’s goal is to eat, and while the power pellets are an offensive and defensive tool to aid in that, the goal of survival is not as intertwined to the main goal as the more astroids that are shot, the more screen space you have to work with.
The awkward moving is genius as it helps create interesting situations and rewards skill full movement, even if you can get away with just sitting there in the early game.
The 3 options available to you by pressing down, while I don’t think are necessary balanced in my possibly not correct opinion (I am basically going off first impressions here) they don’t necessarily need to be. While the warp might suck as a panic button, it is still a panic button and it teaches you to not get yourself into those situations in the first place.
The shield, while will blow you up within 2 seconds of holding in the same vain to Jigglypuff’s shield in the Super Smash Brothers series, feels so rewarding to use as it is a very effective dodge.
The final option allows you to flip 180°. This is extremely interesting as not only does it allow you to speed up aiming, it allows for interesting movement such as moving away from a set of astroids, then flipping 180° to safely shoot at them. In short the warp is there to teach you as it is probably the first one you will use being set to game 1 and the other 2 are designed to be useful, but require thinking.
TL;DR:
I played Astroids and started contemplating the loneliness and cruelness of space and sometimes Earth.
I booted up the game and just became entranced. My mind was full of questions. Why is the spaceship stuck in between a bunch of astroids? Is help on the way? How long will this situation take? While every arcade game has the secondary goal of simply surviving, surviving is also part of Astroids aesthetic/theme, even the music creates tension and dread. PAC-MAN’s goal is to eat, and while the power pellets are an offensive and defensive tool to aid in that, the goal of survival is not as intertwined to the main goal as the more astroids that are shot, the more screen space you have to work with.
The awkward moving is genius as it helps create interesting situations and rewards skill full movement, even if you can get away with just sitting there in the early game.
The 3 options available to you by pressing down, while I don’t think are necessary balanced in my possibly not correct opinion (I am basically going off first impressions here) they don’t necessarily need to be. While the warp might suck as a panic button, it is still a panic button and it teaches you to not get yourself into those situations in the first place.
The shield, while will blow you up within 2 seconds of holding in the same vain to Jigglypuff’s shield in the Super Smash Brothers series, feels so rewarding to use as it is a very effective dodge.
The final option allows you to flip 180°. This is extremely interesting as not only does it allow you to speed up aiming, it allows for interesting movement such as moving away from a set of astroids, then flipping 180° to safely shoot at them. In short the warp is there to teach you as it is probably the first one you will use being set to game 1 and the other 2 are designed to be useful, but require thinking.
TL;DR:
I played Astroids and started contemplating the loneliness and cruelness of space and sometimes Earth.