shoot ’em up

Survived By: early access impressions

10th December 2018 By Qazimod Leave a Comment

Survived By is a game I stumbled upon after clicking my way through the discovery queues and “More Like This” lists you can find within the storefront of Steam. Described as a “free-to-play online bullet-hell style roguelite” on the Steam store’s product page, it seemed to cover a number of game genres I enjoy – okay, the “free-to-play” label sounded a few alarm bells… but the idea of running around with other players, shooting various foes and exploring a large map sounded interesting. I never really checked out Survived By in its alpha form, but after reading about the game’s premise, I added it to my Steam wish list so that I could be notified when the game was available, and on the 5th of December I received an email that told me Survived By could be played in early access form, so I had a little look at it last week.

Survived By: early gameplay

Controlling the game with mouse and keys, you spawn into a central area with other players, and then you can set out to explore the world and fill out the map. In combat, you move with WSAD and aim and shoot with the mouse, and you can collect items and materials by walking over them. In the central area there are daily challenges that ask you to do x amount of damage or kill y number of enemies, and there are also “quests” that periodically occur whilst you are playing – usually these quests involve following a waypoint to a particular enemy and then defeating it. After playing for long enough and obtaining keys you eventually manage to unlock one of the dungeons (which has a suitably impressive name like “Monastery of the Rift”) – here, you enter a closed area such as a cave, move through winding paths that may lead to dead ends, collectibles or more enemies, and eventually you’ll reach and defeat a boss creature and gain items and gold as your reward before you head back to the public central area.

Survived By: exploration and pacing

From my time playing, that central area was one of the more impressive aspects of Survived By – the shadowy incomplete map segments invite you to go further outside of the safer areas and find stronger enemies that may drop better rewards or give more experience, and my attempts to complete the map often lead to an early demise. Being a roguelite, death can see a player losing their character and having to create a new one that starts with no experience, so there’s always a certain amount of tension when venturing outward. That “bullet-hell” label might not result in Cave levels of insanity, but areas can get pretty busy with enemies and projectiles. The main concern I have at the moment is how the genre-blending could affect the pacing. In a multiplayer online game built around levelling and customisation, you want to find bigger and stronger challenges, but in a roguelite you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Survived By is both, and some players might find death somewhat punishing after they’ve gained a good number of levels. Although, that’s kind of the idea. I don’t know if it’s the kind of game that I could play for days on end, but it’s got enough going on to keep me curious, and I might drop back in on occasion to see how the game is developing. Right now, anyone can go onto the Steam store and take a look for themselves, but you will need to spend a few minutes registering and setting up a (free) account.

You can play Survived By on Steam in its Early Access form here. You can read about more Steam news and opinions here

2D Vertical Shooter Fast Striker Offers PS4 & Vita Action

11th October 2018 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

We love a bit of retro 2D shooting at Disposable Media. And the release of Fast Striker for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita definitely ticks all our boxes. It was originally developed for the NeoGeo MVS by NGDev, arrived as one of the last games released for the Sega Dreamcast, and will now be available as a download or rare Limited Edition physical release for the PS4 and Vita.

So Fast Striker covers pretty much everything a retro vertical schmup obsessive could desire. But somehow Qazimod hasn’t had time to write about it, so I’m stepping in!

Quick history lesson first. NGDEV was founded as an indie game developer back in 2001 by German brothers Timm and Rene Hellwig. And they’ve specialised in 2D shooters and arcade-style games for 17 years including the likes of Last Hope, Gunlord, Razion and Neo XYX. The original versions of Fast Striker arrived for the Neo Geo and Dreamcast back in 2010, and on iOS in 2011. Play-Asia still have the listings for the regular and Limited Edition Dreamcast versions with positive reviews from all those years ago, even if the games are obviously out of stock now.

Now back to the present. NGDEV and publisher eastasiasoft are releasing PlayStation 4 and PS Vita editions of Fast Striker based on the latest updated version of the game, which is version 1.5. And it features cross-buy support when it’s available on October 17th as a download for €6.99. Which is a good way to experience the six stages, four game modes and constant 60 fps action.

But there’s more. Just 2,200 copies are being created of a physical Limited Edition release for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. In addition to a region free copy of the game and manual, you’ll also get the Fast Striker Collector’s Box, an Original Soundtrack CD, and a Numbered Certificate.

The Fast Striker Playstation 4 Limited Edition physical release is only available through Play-Asia. And the same is true of the Fast Striker PlayStation Vita physical Limited Edition, which might well be the rarer version if you’re looking to buy it as an investment.

Obviously we’d never encourage someone to invest in video games that weren’t worth playing. So what’s Fast Striker actually like as a game?

Fast Striker Trailer:

Fast Striker: The Game:

The fast-paced, reaction-led vertical shoot ’em up is set in 2020, a year that’s not far away now. Machines constructed to protect and serve mankind in Hyper Blues City have run amuck. And their inventor Samial Salival has disappeared without a trace. Now the robots are building a weapon to completely destroy the city, protected by a flight squad led by the City Guardian. And the only hope is you aboard the Fast Striker FX-1 Prototype.

Which means selecting a difficult level from Novice, Original, Maniac and Omake modes. And to accommodate beginners and expert shooter addicts, each mode has a different playable ship, features and scoring system. So in Novice mode you shoot the enemies and collect gold stars. Whereas other difficulties let you spread your shots, fire rocket attacks and use an energy beam to multiply your score. As well as rewarded you for being closer to the enemies before you kill them.

There are a total of six stages to survive and save your city. And more than 40 unique enemy types to destroy.

If that’s not enough, completing the game on a single credit will let you take on a hidden boss. And to discover the true ending of Fast Striker.

“We’re thrilled to bring our unique twist on the classic vertical shoot ’em up to PlayStation 4 and PS Vita owners,” said René Hellwig, Game Designer at NGDEV. “Fast Striker will test the hand-eye coordination of even the most experienced arcade players.”

You do get the options to map your control buttons. And to use the adjustable screen settings, giving yourself the optimal chance of victory.

The physical Fast Striker Limited Editions for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita can be viewed now on the Play-Asia site and you can save them for when they’re available to pre-order, or sign up for an email alert as soon as you can grab a copy before they sell out.

Shütshimi review (PS+)

14th April 2016 By Qazimod Leave a Comment

Shütshimi is both a game with a comforting level of familiarity and something with unique gameplay elements that set it apart from other titles in the genre. It’s a horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up that started out on Xbox Live Indie Games but was recently made available for PS4 and Vita owners via the Instant Game Collection of PlayStation Plus. However, rather than presenting you with conventional levels that take between five and ten minutes to complete and have a natural sense of progression, Shütshimi is close to Wario Ware in terms of gameplay – it’s USP is that the player must survive ten-second “waves” of enemies broken up by shopping excursions between waves where the player picks a gameplay modifier from those on offer. Some of these modifiers are helpful, others can prove to be problematic, and the vast majority of them have text descriptions that are near-useless in telling the player what they do during waves. Even this shop has a timer that’s only a few seconds long, so you often find yourself picking the first thing that sounds like it might be useful and then hoping for the best.

The happy unpredictability of Shütshimi

On paper, it sounds like it should be a recipe for disaster that results in a mess of a game, but the hopeless perk descriptions and variety of waves turn what would be a run-of-the-mill shoot ’em up into something that’s a lot less predictable. One perk taks about the opportunity to have “way more friends” in the next wave, and I thought that this might be a positive – maybe the description meant that I would have Gradius-style Options with me or something – instead, this perk ended up flooding the screen with even more enemies than usual. Other descriptions are a bit more blunt and easy to predict, particularly the ones that grant you traditional power-ups such as rapid fire, laser shots or a shotgun, and eventually if you play the game enough you start to see through some of the more misleading descriptions. However, even when you know what’s coming the shop timer forces you to make quick decisions and these can lead to mistakes when selecting modifiers – consequently, the gameplay rarely becomes stale. Outside of the shop items there is extra variety in the music, backdrops and enemies, but the overall style of the game is consistently charming and has a sense of humour that’s inclusive and rarely crass. (One modifier does replace the background and some items with “butts”, although even this is presented in a simple cartoon fashion and can’t really be considered overly offensive.)

Shütshimi – a chaotic novelty

Shütshimi might sound chaotic and haphazard but there is some form of structure and progression in the game – every few waves you encounter a “boss” with a large health bar, but since you only have a few seconds to do damage, you sometimes have to wait for the boss stage to come around a few more times before you can drain the health bar completely. This makes “learning” the shop item descriptions valuable in the long-term, since you eventually learn to know when a boss encounter is coming and try to select high-damage or rapid-fire modifiers in anticipation of the encounter. Even when you’ve defeated all of the bosses there are extra difficulty modes to unlock and try out, so there’s a bit more depth to Shütshimi than the cheap and cheerful indie stylings might suggest. At the same time, I imagine that the novelty of the game will wear off quicker for some gamers, and anyone looking for more structure and progression in their shooters might be disappointed. For those people, there are games such as Velocity 2X and Resogun, but if you’re subscribed to PS+ there’s no harm in trying this out.

Shütshimi is currently available for free during April for PlayStation Plus members

Beat Da Beat review

15th March 2016 By Qazimod Leave a Comment

Beat Da Beat sounds like it should be the kind of thing that fans of scrolling shooters and rhythm-action games should instantly enjoy. Originally launched for mobile devices but released on Steam this month, it’s a shooter that features catchy electronic music and elaborate bullet patterns, but in Beat Da Beat the action is synchronised to the music, so you might have enemies moving in time with the beat, enemies appearing onscreen at the start of a bar in the music, notes being fired out in time with the main melody, and more besides. So whereas something like Rez would base rhythm on player actions – delaying shots slightly to fit in time with predetermined melodies, for instance – Beat Da Beat has a fixed rhythm to its gameplay that is influenced by the soundtrack. The interesting side-effect of this approach is that in order to learn a stage in Beat Da Beat, you almost have to learn the song. By failing and replaying the same stage repeatedly you begin to get used to the patterns, and you know that when those four bars finish, that large enemy is going to appear onscreen and attempt to ruin your day.

Beat Da Beat but Wait Out Da Miniboss

The music in Beat Da Beat heavily leans towards electronica more than any other genre, so there are lots of melodic beeps, some pumping synthy sounds and contrasts between slow dubstep rhythms and faster beats. Considering that the aesthetic of the game is as traditional as you can get – spaceships and laser guns abound – the soundtrack suits the game really well, although if you’re not a fan of electronic music you might not warm to the tunes as easily. In order for the fusion of shooting and music to work well, stages often have timed set-pieces – for instance, you may have to defeat a miniboss during one phase of the song, or enemies may fly away if you haven’t destroyed them in the next few bars. This makes sense in a way, as the music isn’t going to wait around for you to finish destroying those enemies. That said, most of the enemies have some kind of health gauge that depletes as they take hits, and so when a miniboss arrives with no lifebar it’s not clear whether you actually have to deal damage or just survive the onslaught until the miniboss flies away and the music moves on.

Beat Da Beat and Buy Da Upgrades

With a soundtrack of mostly enjoyable music and lots of satisfying bullet patterns to navigate, Beat Da Beat is one of the better examples of this kind of game. It may seem a bit simple at times and the mouse control is unusual, but the shooting is fun and the upgrade paths mean that even if you get stuck somewhere you can keep replaying and earning ingame currency for upgrades (and the costs are always reasonable, so there is never an absurd amount of grinding.) My only slight issue with Beat Da Beat is a purely aesthetic one – most of the time ships fly onscreen and attack in time with the music, and the effect is great. However, sometimes that effect is applied in lazier ways, with bullet patterns just appearing out of nowhere for the sake of accompanying the music. You can still have fun avoiding these bullet patterns, but you just wish they were coming out of something rather than merely “existing”, and it feels a tiny bit lazy. Nevertheless, Beat Da Beat offers plenty of fun for a reasonable price, and it’s a worthy addition to anyone’s shooter collection.

Beat Da Beat is available now on iTunes, Google Play and Steam. More information on the game can be found at http://www.beat-da-beat.com/.

Point Perfect Review

3rd October 2015 By Chris Walton Leave a Comment

You can image how Point Perfect might have been conceived.

Sat staring at a computer monitor with nothing to play, or waiting for something to happen. You gaze idly at the mouse cursor as you move it around the screen. Perhaps you click on a few things or drag big rectangles, and then inspiration hits – “What if this was a game?”

And so the unique feature of Point Perfect springs into life. The spaceship of most shooters is replaced with your mouse cursor. Rather than passing above objects, the pointer becomes a physical object inhabiting the same space as obstacles and enemies, leading to collisions with both.

This leaves you with a sole method of defence. The only way to repel enemies is by selecting them in groups. So as the ships and so on fly in, you’re tasked with surrounding them with ‘bounding boxes’ before they have the chance to do whatever it is they intend to your otherwise unarmed cursor.

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It’s a novel and fascinating concept that takes a while to get accustomed to. Even then, you’ll probably still suffer from momentary lapses in concentration and foolishly plough your ship into something that you were trying to go through instead of around. Having this cognitive dissonance as part of the central game mechanic is what makes Pitch Perfect so stressful as well as exciting.

Point Perfect is a game produced for a specific controller. You could say that it’s similar to the stylus control experimentation behind early Nintendo DS titles. It definitely works, as long as you have adequate mouse and motor skills. You might even find you improve your mouse handling on the route to point-y perfection.

It won’t be easy though.

Even when not taking my own stupidity into account, Point Perfect is very difficult. However, that difficulty doesn’t come from unfairness.

The gameplay is quite logical and consistent, without relying on cheap tricks. With procedurally-generated enemies following different flight paths, it means you can’t rely on the memorisation that guides you through most shoot’em ups. Only boss battles tend to stick to certain patterns. That unpredictability means you’re in a constant state of reaction, rather than being able to prepare for the next offensive. It does keep the game fresh, yet also maintains its challenge.

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If Point Perfect has a flaw, it’s due to the nature of the game and control method dictating a lack of variety common to many shooters. But the large roster of bosses and a couple of secret stages offer enough change to keep the game compelling, and there’s enough overall to keep you motivated to come back to what is essentially a score attack game. Still, you probably won’t see most of it. You’ll be dead, mocked by the game for your lack of skill!

The game is graphically presented in a pixellated retro style that is slightly more complex than true 8-bit graphics. And it’s complimented by ’80s chip-tune style music which unfortunately gets fairly repetitive. The tunes do evolve a little if you’re good enough to reach past the initial stage of each game, but not enough to avoid becoming overly familiar.

Stylistically, the Point Perfect mostly references internet trolls, on-line PC gaming and some classic ’80s retro games. Er, and some good old weirdness! It’s actually interesting that the game manages to share the spirit of 8-bit classics quite so well too, since the core concept of the game is quite new.

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Point Perfect also is a bit basic in terms of guidance and online features. No instructions are included, so you have to figure things out for yours. Some might say that the game is holding true to its ‘old game’ inspirations right there!

But it’s harder to justify the big omission of online high score tables, which would add competition and more of a replay value to the game. And there are no sensitivity options – which means everyone has the same experience but might frustrate some players. The Steam version does achievements and trading cards, which means when there’s a sale, the game could almost pay for itself!

Overall, Point Perfect is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of difficult challenges and unique gaming experiences – as long as you don’t mind a game hitting back with some on-screen mockery! It’s overall a stressful, frustrating and also compelling experiment that works rather well. For a certain type of player. Those who aren’t interested in a game style that leads to a gradual improvement of skill or beating high scores won’t find much of interest here.

Not entirely drawn in by this type of game, I’d rate it at 6 out of 10. A more experienced Shoot’Em Up fan or someone prepared to take on the difficulty challenge will probably get more mileage out of the unfortunately solo experience.

Given the history of ‘Point ‘n’ Click’ Adventure games, it certainly deserves some recognition for bringing a new ‘Point ‘n’ Drag ‘n’ Click’ experience to shooters.

Point Perfect is listed at £4.49 on Steam for Windows or Mac.

Another bookmark for fans of eastern freeware (shooters)

6th February 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Usually when I’m looking for shooty material for my Freeware column I go to either Shoot The Core or Vector, and the former does occassionally provide download links from the latter when promoting new games. However, today I found StC referencing Freem, another nice eastern freeware site that has it’s own section for shooters. Time will tell if the material’s any good, but it’s nice to have another bookmark.

Survived By: early gameplay

Survived By: exploration and pacing

Fast Striker Trailer:

Fast Striker: The Game:

The happy unpredictability of Shütshimi

Shütshimi – a chaotic novelty

Beat Da Beat but Wait Out Da Miniboss

Beat Da Beat and Buy Da Upgrades

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