The Electronic Shoot-out in Cyberspace.
The game only give us the "New Game" option, after picking it, we can decide if we want to play on Warm (Easy), Hot (Normal) or Volcanic (Hard), and the option to select 1 of 5 available slots to save our game. However, to fully conquer the game it is not required to play on the Volcanic difficulty, so you'll be fine in Hot.
Select Weapon Array.
We're given the option of selecting our initial weapon, my best option is to pick the Spread since it is the most basic of the four and doesn't require too much of a learning curve. Vulcan is a single rapid paced machine gun like laser, Swarm is a curtain of bullets in a somewhat erratic pattern and Reflex is your rebound type that bounces after hitting a wall. Keep in mind, once you select your weapon, the other three will be locked until you find a Weapon Unlock spot. The same goes for the Missiles, which i recommend to pick the Seeker as your initial Subweapon. Flak combines the exploding type missile with a scattershot as the bullet splits in multiple shots that explode, Creeper is the grenade type that stops at a certain distance and explodes after a few seconds, and Phantom is the "Wave Shot" type that passes through objects.
Another sub-weapon at our disposal are the Powers, which uses a purple energy bar. Overdrive increases your regular weapon's rate of fire, but consumes all of the Power bar in one "blast". Electro is a short ranged lightning attack that requires to be extremely close to an enemy. Repulsor destroys all the small bullets that gets close to your ship and Slowmo reduces the game's speed for better evasive moves.
Along with your Powers and Sub-weapons you can use Drones which are the Options of this game, providing additional firepower to you ship. The only flaw is that Drones consume what we can call Drone Points after a while and when you take a hit. Fortunately you can replenish your Drones by picking Drone Points on the level or buying a dozen of them on the store.
The gameplay combines the "Oh-so-common" Twin Stick shooter with maze exploration elements which later blends puzzle elements like using warps to move from one point to another. With 80 levels long, the game throws different activities to break the repetitivity on a game of this length. Core Destroyer changes the priority of finding the exit to destroy a specific number of Cores to unlock the exit. Survival simply requires you to survive for a period of time until the timer hits zero.
Along with the maze navigation, the game throws basic RPG elements like the leveling up and skill points. Although there's no difference between your normal level and 2 or more levels up, leveling up in this game is used to obtain skill points, which are used to upgrade your ship's weapons, missiles and powers. Enhancements are powered up by a "Player Ship icon". Picking them will allow you to increase a certain capability like having more health or being faster from zero to x1 and x2.
No, its not a glitch, it's a hidden path that doesn't give you a visual hint to find it until you pass through.
For a maze shooter, it is full of shortcuts. Unlike Super Metroid or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, there's no visual hint about their existence, so you're forced to shoot at the walls until it passes through, and some of them require to use the missiles to break them. Sometimes, hidden shortcuts lead to hidden exits that sends you to bonus levels where you can get all the extra credits you can pick before the timer runs out.
Gone green, gone dead.
Every 20 levels the game throws you a boss fight with unique attack patterns. But guess what?, you only need to use the Overdrive with the Spread shot to defeat them easily.
Like FullBlast, it doesn't require you to fully complete the game to unlock all the achievements since you can get all of them before reaching Stage 40 (of 80). So, we're with one of those junk games that "die out" once you've unlocked everything, a bunch of bucks down the drain for the sake of 1,000 Gamerscore points.
The Schneider Bros. thank you for playing this mess. Aren't you glad?
The ending of this game is as lame as any cheap indie game. After defeating the final bosses in Stage 80, you'll get a screen saying "THE END [NEW GAME+ UNLOCKED]", after that comes the credits.
Anyone who thought the Arrange Mode ending of Triggerheart Exelica was lame, there's even worse and this game is one of those because we're talking about 80 stages that become boring and the only thing you want to do is to finish it once and for all.
New Game+ breaks with the common concept of said mode of many other games, because instead of re-starting the game with all your upgrades, the game gives you some of them in a random power order, giving you the option to shuffle if you want to try another combination. The rest is the same game, only the stages have a "+" on the number.
Looks like the "C" from Compile Heart's logo flew away and entered on a Cyberspace battle.
Graphically, this game uses the premise of Vectorial graphics combined with the black and blue similar to Pac-Man's mazes, except for the second half of the game where it turns all red and black like a Virtual Boy game. The ship design is quite curious. If you ask me, it looks like the "C" from Compile Heart's logo flew away from the heart symbol where it was confined and entered Cyberspace, engaging with the digital lifeforms within the mazes.
The sound is completely forgettable, as its electronic ambient is slow-paced and after 20 stages it turns repetitive. This is the kind of game that makes me miss the CD-ripper function of the original XBOX where you can switch between the game BGM or the music ripped from your CD's.
In conclusion we're with a long maze-shooter hybrid that while it looks fun at the first levels, it will become way too repetitive despite the maze layouts. Just wait until the game becomes "Free with Gold" 'cos it doesn't deserve your cash.