THEY TRY TO DENY THEM, I TRY TO REVIEW THEM.
THIS TIME... I WILL... TAKE THE SHOT.
Yeah, the Trashfall "Anti-Marathon" of bad shmup reviews is still going on.
For today's review, the trash game to talk about will be Ascendshaft by The Voices Games / Matthew Green for the PlayStation 4
Atari-styled Trainwreck.
The gameplay of Ascendshaft is a vertical scroll shooter where the main objective is to clear the levels with all the enemies defeated as your kill rate is evaluated. For instance, Stage 1 has 18 enemies that comprise the 100%. Your ship has a single weapon: Straight bullets and the Thruster to make the game scroll faster...and this is where the good things end, as the game soon falls on one problem after another, starting off with the limited screen size. This wouldn't be any problem when things are done right (Nintendo's SolarStriker is a good example), but in this game you'll be greeted with irregular cavern walls and later obstacles like projectiles that "semi-lock" based on your last position, that means, missile falls first and then go left or right when the ship position matches that of the missile and diagonal cannons which will fire big ship-sized bullets. Add to all that the crammed screen and you'll have a nightmare of shooting. I mean ¿Why the limited movement range?, even the shmups of the Atari 2600 didn't had such restrictions despite having cavern walls (Vanguard is a good example of what I mean). But the stupidest of all flaws is that your bullets can be destroyed by the enemy fire. If one bullet collides with an enemy shot, then it won't count as a hit. That goes against the combat aspects of any known shmup, call it old or new. If games like Gradius, Ginga Force or Strikers 1945 III had that problem they'll be unplayable.
Also, everytime an enemy is destroyed it scatters in a four bullet spread which can be dodged when you have enough space (mostly on the center of the "/ | | \" curtain), but what makes things even worse is that your regular bullets have their own energy bar and it depletes after like 10 bullets or so, this is troublesome during boss battles, especially the second and final boss which will take a real advantage of the mentioned game flaws. The first boss however, is very easy, you just have to use the Thruster as he tries to ram you so you can move away from crushing you when he reappears from behind you as you wait for your bullet gauge to recharge. Speaking of getting hit, your hitbox is like a rectangle that comprises the ship and the remaining space within it. I noticed that 'cos sometimes I die for no reason as a bullet was 2 pixels away from the ship's nose kinda like in the NES port of SkyShark. For your luck, there's no Game Over if you die, only unlimited lives but slight checkpointing like R-Type Final 2. The game autosaves after clearing a stage, even after killing the final boss, sending you to the ending and credits. For some strange reason, the game doesn't send you back to the title automatically. You have to do that by yourself or else your ship will be stucked in limbo after the credits.
As for Trophy unlocking, this is one of those games where you'll probably give up on getting all of them as the last two will require you to kill 50 enemies (and the first boss) without dying once. The Platinum trophy unlocks after the rest are done. One final advice, if you die don't even think about pausing the game to pick exit and continue where you left off because the game knows that trick and the trophy won't unlock. It's all on a single session.
This makes Gameboy Camera look HD.
The graphics, throughout the gameplay feel like ZiMAG's Cosmic Corridor, but with some gradient efects in the style of Activision's Grand Prix. Seems like Matthew Green has an idea of nodding Atari, but everything falls apart with the "cutscenes" as they look like overcrompressed image files or censored images due to the overpixelation, being the "Boss characters" the worst.
As for the sound, the game verges on the Ambient-Chillout style of music which breaks with the chiptune standards of the Atari and any retro-like game. The voice acting was all made by Matthew Green himself, even the girl that says "Return safely, my love". However, the boss cutscenes sound almost incomprehensible as we hear "Buhbluh-brhh consciousness or you will die" in one of them. The low budget is notorious here as we hear "Return safely, my love -CLICK!-" as if someone forgot to crop the sound file while they were recording or something.
TRIVIASHAFT
- The first version of the game had a glitch on the Killing Streak trophy which made it impossible to unlock despite killing 50 enemies without dying once.
- There's a 2-in-1 version which included Endless Shaft as a bonus game.
We're almost done with the Trashfall.
Part V is coming and it will be a hellish ride with Gearshifters.
Ascendshaft is an example of how not to make an Atari 2600 homage as we have flaws that compromise the gameplay. For a "One man project" it had potential, but Matthew Green made several errors that ruin everything on it.
To put it simple: Just stay away from this game.
LEA...HATES...YOU.