Void Source (PlayStation 4 - Nintendo Switch - PC)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Void Source (PlayStation 4 - Nintendo Switch - PC)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

TRASHFALL FINAL (PART VII)
VIDEOGAME IDIOCY HURTS


Oh, God. Xitilon/Xitilonic Arts is back. You'll probably remember them from trash games like Alienzix and SoulFrost (Soon to be reviewed here). Well, here's their latest work: Void Source.



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The Void Source World Tour 2022.

The first thing to do before hitting the skies (and the gameplay of Void Source) is to choose which part of the world and the outer space you want to go. This game gives you full liberty of where to go rather than a linear progression of "Point A to Point B", but also allows you to revisit the stages in pure Megaman X style for the sake of gathering credits and buy new weapons for your ship.



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UFO attacks could be boring sometimes.

Time to talk about the gameplay. The game is an horizontal scrolling shooter where you can aim freely as if it was a Twin-stick shmup. Like in Alienzix, you will be granted with plenty of power ups that drop from the sky, but in a more re-balanced rate drop so you can choose which weapon/upgrade you want to pick and dodge enemy fire withouy any problems. In this game you have to pick the same weapon four times to max up your power to level 5. There's also the green orbs that provide you a close range offensive attack which later becomes a spinning sword and later a circular field that damages anything that gets close to it. But what makes the game interesting is the combo multiplier. This isn't the standard "1 Kill = 1 Multiplier added", each bullet that makes a hit on your enemies is a multiplier added, and apparently the multiplier can go on forever and can be exploited for trophy reasons (I'll explain this a little bit later). You can also use a shield to bounce the enemy fire back to the enemy kinda like in Alienzix. The game doesn't limit to be an horizontal scrolling shooter, there's stages where the game will change to different play styles, like the second Railroad level which requires you to fly low in some segments as the train enters through tunnels, the Cave levels which are the best by far, are the basic "Maze Exploration" levels where you have to navigate left to right across tunnels and avoid instant death obstacles like tentacles and flytraps, and there's the Volcano stage where you'll be pitted on a vertical scrolling speed segment where your priority is to avoid the obstacles from above, along with the enemies and avoiding to touch the magma on the bottom of the screen. Such new features makes this game both a sucessor of Alienzix and what the game should be rather than that crappy attempt to a Windows 2000 styled shmup.

Well, it's time to talk about the flaws of this game. First one is that the game could be boring most of the times, since there's not too much challenge to face across the levels and sometimes you have to avoid enemies until your weapon is powered up to level 2 or so and even have the right weapon 'cos if you're with the level 1 blaster, the medium sized enemies will escape, and that kills the fun of the game. Speaking of killing, they can kill you fast since your lifebar suffers the classic Turridamage problem that plagues most indie shmups: Your life drops without recovery between hits (I guess indie developers have some sadism towards the player). You have a few lives, and if you lose them all is Game Over, but the game saves your progress, so if you die you can resume by picking "Continue" on the main menu and pick another stage.



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Deep-Sea Troubles.

Some of the stages have boss battles with their own attack patterns, but the most repetitive and annoying are the "Cannon" type boss like the Super and Ultra Cannons. These ones are nothing more than cowards due to one annoying feature: Player-damaging Bullet bouncing shields. Firing a bullet to any part except for the cannon will result in getting your bullets bounced back to you and they can hit you, and with the Turridamage rampant in this game this can be fatal. You can use your shield to bounce the cannonballs back to the cannon, but you should dodge the beams. This is where you need to have a straight firing weapon and it might take you some time to practice due to the controls and the precision firing these cannon type bosses require. Fortunately, this game doesn't have too many bosses.



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The Genealogic Tree of Mass Destruction

The game relies on the concept of weapon investing and research, which means you can buy a stronger weapon until you buy the previous one, kinda like Ginga Force, and since the game drops items frequently, you can switch on or off which items you want to get like the upgrades in Super Metroid. To do this just put the cursor on the selected weapon. Green circle means the weapon will be available in the and red circle is for toggle off. This is useful when you want to use a specific weapon on a particular stage (For instance, the Force Cone in the Space stages).



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Is gonna take you a while, but it will be worth the time and effort.

For any normal gamer, reaching the Mega-Score trophy sounds impossible unless you play Space 2 (Not to be confused with Breakthrough Gaming's turd). But it will require you to have researched all the weapons up to the Force Cone so you can destroy most enemies and asteroids to get the million point score. Well, there's an early way to hit the millions. In the Underwater stage, there's "pods" that spew white orbs. You can shoot them and destroy them to increase the combo multiplier. For that you're gonna need at least three Pods and your gun in Level 2. DON'T PICK the spinning orb item 'cos that will destroy a pod, resulting in spending more time. Just shoot straight either left or right and dodge items by moving horizontally until you get 2000 multipliers or so. Doing this will also allow you to buy all the upgrades in one visit. Trophy progression is the real deal of this game as you have to reach the million points, buying all weapons and clearing all the levels.



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If the Moon really is what you think it is, we're going to need a shmup player first. Suit up.

The graphic quality of this game is constantly fluctuating from good to bad, as we have photo-realistic mountains and well-drawn ships and enemies, along with few structures like houses. Your ship looks quite abstract as we have this UFO with spinning things on its sides acting as the thrusters, but they're separated from the ship, implying futurism and advanced technology like Redout: Space Assault. There's average graphics like the ground, the clouds which can be a problem as they block the screen (Desert is the main example of this) and the water. Speaking of water, the underwater level is pathethic, as we have a blue void on a crappy sufrace. This might have worked on early NES games, but not on a PlayStation 4 shmup, and its more pathetic with that screen distortion effect for an "underwater" feeling. ¿But you know what's the most hilarious part of the game? Your "Force Field" is actually an overlay of the Moon, and if that wasn't enough, the spinning blade also has a distorted Moon surface texture too, making the visual effect look like a low budget game. ¿Does Roland Emmerich and KC Houseman made this game?

It's worth to mention the artwork of this game, especially the title screen and ending images, which they are incredible. They look like the cover art of a metal album in the styles of Judas Priest, Meshuggah and Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Star One, although the use of the Batman Forever font which makes it look like a local metal band.



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Walking through fire, fate's in my hands.
Waiting for lightning to strike.
Man on a wire, bearing the brand.
Waiting for lightning to striiiiiiike!
Lightning to strike!



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We are the Future, We own the stars.
We are Explorers, the Sky is Ours.
We are the Keepers, a million souls.
The Lost Children of the Universe.
As we are REACHING FOR THE STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARS!!



The music is quite amazing, as it relies on metal-electronic combinations that manage to pound some action to the game and break the tradition of the techno-ambient combination and chiptune style that are quite common on indie shmups. Darkman007 really made an impressive job with the music of this game and his work here is perhaps the best part of it.


VOID CURIOSITIES


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At least they should kept the anime girl in the updates.

- The early versions of Void Source had less levels and it was even crappier on visual terms.
- In the early releases, the UFO pilot was an anime styled green haired girl, but she was replaced by an alien being on the later updates which were carried on the PlayStation 4 port.
- The location of the "Underwater" level is way off the ocean or any of the major water bodies of Africa as it seems to point the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Force Cone is wrongly spelled as "Forcecone".
- Darkman007 is also known as the composer of Super Cyborg.



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It's time to go back home, I guess.
I've already finished this game and got everything to unlock.


Compared with Alienzix, Void Source is more of what Alienzix deserved to be in gameplay aspects and is much more playable, but it still is a crappy shooter with some interesting ideas, but with several issues to be addressed.
Aside from that, Is another, yet fun to play "Trophy Booster" with rock-alternative styled music which is perhaps the best part of the whole game.
Download, play, get the trophies and uninstall. Your usual crap shooter that only serves to obtain a few trophies.


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Shizuka is not happy with this game.
Fan of Transformers, Shmups and Anime-styled Girls. You're teamed up with the right pilot!
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