Tag: shooter

GAME REVIEW: Scramble

written by David Steffen

Scramble is a side-scrolling shooter game published as an arcade machine by Konami in 1981.

The controls are very similar to other games of its type (many of which were inspired by this directly or indirectly). A joystick to move, and two fire buttons–one for quick forward shots and another for slower falling bombs. The object is to stay alive by avoiding terrain and destroying or avoiding enemy craft, but you also need to maintain your fuel supply or your ship will fall to its doom, which you do by attacking fuel tanks on the ground.

I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum.

Visuals
Decent for their time

Audio
They’re okay.

Challenge
Very challenging, especially the fuel aspect of it. Without that you could probably just avoid things entirely much of the time, but many of the fuel tanks are inconveniently placed so that you have to try to bomb them which is difficult to time correctly because the bombs are so slow.

Story
No particular story (not that that’s unusual for an arcade game from this era).

Session Time
Depends on how good you are. An average player, probably a couple minutes.

Playability
Easy to understand, hard to master the timing of the bombs.

Replayability
Like most old arcade games, they did get replayed alot, with the goal being to get further and further and get higher scores, but not really replayable in the usual sense I mean this, since the game starts completely from scratch when you start playing.

Originality
It is based around a familiar type of game but with rule rewriting system I’ve never seen before, ends up making it a whole new kind of game.

Playtime
I haven’t finished yet, so I’m really not sure, if you like this kind of game you could put in many hours trying to perfect it.

Overall
This is a fun side-scrolling space shooter game, which even if you haven’t played you might have played other games in the same style that came later like Gradius III (also by Konami), though it’s simpler in some ways than those the added challenge of needing to collect fuel adds an interesting twist to it that I haven’t seen in other games and forces the player to perfect their timing with the bomb attack. There have been some re-releases of this game, including as part of a downloadable Konami collection on Steam for $20, bundled with 7 other Konami games

GAME REVIEW: Elevator Action

written by David Steffen

Elevator Action is a 1983 spy action game by Taito published in arcade format. As each level begins the player character grapples to the top of a 30-story building and must make their way down to the ground floor through the building filled with gun-toting guards while collecting secret documents along the way.

The most novel part of the game, as the name suggests, is the elevators used to move from floor to floor which you and the guards can use to shift up or down floors. You do have an advantage over an individual guard: you also have a gun, and both you and the guards will die from a single bullet, and the guards don’t seem inclined to dodge by jumping and ducking as you can, and you can also kill the guards by jump-kicking.

As far as arcade games of the era go, this one is much easier to get pretty good at than most, so was probably an easy “gateway game” for arcade players. despite the relatively simple controls, you have quite a few options between shooting and dodging and jump-kicking and riding elevators to evade or attack the guards.

I played this for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Visuals
Typical for the era.

Audio
Typical for the era.

Challenge
Lower than most arcade games, much easier entry point.

Story
Not much story (typical of the era and format).

Session Time
Depends how good you are!

Playability
Simple, apart from it not being immediately obvious that you have to collect documents behind the red doors, and if you don’t open those doors reaching the ground floor just sends you back up.

Replayability
Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.

Originality
It was a new twist at the time.

Playtime
I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.

Overall
This is a fun game and less frustrating than other games of its time. And there have been various recent-ish ports that you might be able to find.

GAME REVIEW: Robotron 2084

written by David Steffen

Robotron 2084 was developed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz  and released in 1982. A multi-directional shooter survival game, where the object is to survive in a fight against endless waves of killer robots while rescuing human survivors along the way.

The game uses a dual-joystick movement and shooting scheme that made it easy to share controls with a friend, and featured some major hardware innovations for the time that allowed large numbers of enemies to be animated on the screen at the same time making for exciting fast-paced action. At any given time you are being swarmed by robots for multiple directions and you have to move in any direction to avoid them while firing in any direction as well–the direction of firing is independent of direction of movement, so you can fire in the direction you’re moving, or fire backward, or fire to the side. (This scheme was used for later games like Super Smash TV if it seems familiar).

This game’s dual-joystick independent control also makes it suitable for two players cooperative play–one player per joystick. I played it with kid, for which most 80’s arcade games are way too hard, and together we were better than I was by myself, with me controlling the movement (and really just concentrating on dodging) and them controlling the shooting from the moving.

I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Visuals
Not the most detailed, but where this one really shines (for its era) is the number of animated things on the screen at a time!

Audio
Typical for the era.

Challenge
High.

Story
Simple (not unusual for that era).

Session Time
Depends how good you are!

Playability
Simple controlers, with basic direction joystick and directional shooting, but hard to master, it’s hard to do both at once and the challenge ramps up quickly.

Replayability
Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.

Originality
It was a major innovation at the time that has inspired other games since then.

Playtime
I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.

Overall
A lot of fun, especially if you get a chance to play it on the arcade console, especially with a friend. I haven’t found a really convenient source to play this game, but it’s had some console ports to SNES among others you might be able to find.

GAME REVIEW: Xevious

written by David Steffen

Xevious is a 1983 vertical-scrolling top-down shooter arcade game published by Namco.

In the game you have two weapons: a laser that fires straight forward that can destroy air targets, and a bomb that fires forward suitable only for land-based targets. As you travel through the level, other flying ships are firing back, as well as ground-based turrets and tanks, reflective obstacles that can only be avoided, as well as boss fights.

I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Visuals
Quite good for the era! Much more detailed than some of its contemporaries.

Audio
Typical for the era.

Challenge
High.

Story
Not much story (typical of the era and format).

Session Time
Depends how good you are!

Playability
Simple, apart from it not being immediately obvious that ground forces CAN be destroyed (lasers fire over the top of them and it takes a little trial and error to figure out the bombs). Joystick for movement, and two fire buttons.

Replayability
Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.

Originality
It was a groundbreaking design of this type of its time, so any perceived lack of originality may be because you’ve played other games inspired by it..

Playtime
I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.

Overall
This is a fun shooter arcade game if you like classic shooter games this is a solid one from the era. If you want to play it now you can find it on some recent-ish game systems, such as Game Boy Advance on Amazon for $12.

GAME REVIEW: Axiom Verge

written by David Steffen

Axiom Verge is a Metroid-style exploration and action side-scroller shooter game released on Steam in 2015 by Thomas Happ Games LLC.

The game starts after Trace is the victim of a lab accident, and wakes up in a mysterious alien world with no memory of how he got there.  He begins exploring, with the guidance of a mysterious voice in his head that knows more about his situation than he does.  As he goes he finds an arsenal of new weapons and items that both help in combat and help unlock new areas of the map that weren’t reachable before.  As he explores wider and wider he finds out more about why he is here and what he is meant to do.

Visuals
16-bit style graphics, nice enough for what they are.  Amusing to have glitchy visuals as an intentional visual effect.

Audio
I didn’t use the audio too much (you can play the game without it which I often will), but the soundtrack is decent, again seems to be inspired by Metroid with its moody soundtrack.  The weapon and monster sound effects I thought were kindof annoying, just as well that I usually play muted.

Challenge
Decent platformer shooter challenge.  If you’re into exploration you can use that to reduce the challenge, because you will find new and interesting weapons and health upgrades and power upgrades and so on.  I didn’t get anywhere near finding every item, so if you were very thorough that would your ability to survive and win the game better. (Conversely if you wanted to increase the challenge, could intentionally avoid grabbing unnecessary items)

One of my favorite aspects of these games is that you will reach a place in the map where you are obstructed because you don’t have the appropriate item to pass an obstacle yet.  So you are rewarded if you kindof keep track of what kind of obstacle you saw where because then once you find the item you can head back and find whatever your reward is for passing the obstacle.

If you end up dying somewhere, you are reincarnated without losing any progress–any map you explored, any items you collected are retained.  I found that reduced the possible frustration, but I suppose it reduced the challenge to some extent as well since there is little penalty for dying.

Story
Certainly some story which unrolls bit by bit as you defeat bosses and find some sympathetic entities that need your assistance.  It’s fairly light on story, you don’t have to really pay attention to the story to move forward, you just have to keep on exploring and fighting bosses and etc.  The story there is is fine, I didn’t find it hugely compelling but I was entertained enough by the game I didn’t care.  There was one segment of the game where the story really took the forefront, transforming a level into a hallucinogenic nightmare–which both cranked the challenge way up and it was interesting to see what they did with it.

Session Time
Very quick game bootup.  You can quit the game at any time and it will save your progress, your map exploration and item acquisition and bosses you’ve defeated and etc, so it’s pretty easy to put down.  But the next time you start the game you will still start at the last save point you visited, so it may take you some time to get back to the point on the map you were at.  So it’s easy to put down, but you may have to retreat to get exactly back where you were.

Playability
Pretty standard controls for this kind of game, easy to get used to.

Replayability
You could keep playing to try to find all of the map and all of the items if you’re into that sort of thing.

Originality
The game is clearly heavily inspired by Metroid, so much of its format it owes to that.  I did appreciate that the game designers didn’t just copy everything from Metroid–the weapons are newly designed, the items to get through obstacles and that sort of thing are all original and it’s interesting to see where they’re going.

So, very familiar format based on a very well known game, but enough original pieces to make it worth playing.

Playtime
I expect this varies wildly based on how completionist you are about map exploration, how efficient you are at remembering what parts of the map have what kind of obstacle, and how good you are at the action sequences (to require more exploration to beef up your stats).

Usually I grab my Steam time on the game for this value, but it is telling me only 3 hours and I know that’s not right–the in-game is telling me more like 12 hours which is probably closer.  (But I didn’t try for completionist, I did explore the map as widely as I could as I went but didn’t worry about trying to get every single thing).

Overall
If you dig Metroid style platformer-shooters you should enjoy this game (and if you don’t know what a Metroid style platformer-shooter, it’s not a bad choice to be the first of its type you’ve played).  Action, gradual map exploration as you find items that unlock new areas, fun stuff.  $20 on Steam.