TAURIAN MANURE
TRASHSTORM IS NOT A REAL STORY.
IS NOT EVEN GOOD FICTION.
IS TRASH GAME REVIEWS.
ALL OF THE GAMES FEATURED WOULD CAUSE A PERSON DISAPPOINTMENT,
ANGER, FRUSTRATION, DEPRESSION, MONEY LOSS INCLUDED.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.
LIST OF PESTILENCE - THE TRASHSTORM SO FAR...
Spoiler
I: EXIT TRASHFALL, WELCOME TRASHSTORM (POWER-DEAD BY BREAKTHROUGH GAMING) - Nik & Kit's Math Quiz
II: UNINSPIRED SPACE SHOOTOUTS - X-Force Genesis
III: NIGHTMARE DRIVING ON THE TRASH GAME ROAD - Driverio
IV: AGE OF DEVELOPER STUPIDITY - Game Achievements "Stroke The Pet" Series
V: TAKE THE TROPHIES, I DON'T WANT THEM! - Rocketio
VI: SUPERDISASTROUS SPACE SHOOTER SQUAD - Super Rebellion
VII: MYRON SAID "CRAPPY HOLIDAYS" - Breakthrough Gaming: The Continents
VIII: BREAK-TURD GAMING...AGAIN - Project: Summer Ice - Pinball
IX: DEEP SPACE ATROCITY - Deep Space Anomaly
X: ZAKYM'S DISASTROUS RETURN - Rocketio 2 and 3
XI: CRAPPER BOWL AND THE END OF BREAKTHROUGH GAMING - Breakthrough Gaming's Football 2
XII: ALPHA MORON - (Alpha Warrior by S-Mobile)
XIII: THE DEEP FREEZE - (SoulFrost by Xitilon)
XIV: WEBNETIC'S FIRST SHOOTER - (Space Defend by Webnetic)
XV: ONE BUTTON CATASTROPHE - (B Cannon by Xitilon)
XVI: CLASH FORCE? MORE LIKE TRASH FORCE! - (Clash Force)
II: UNINSPIRED SPACE SHOOTOUTS - X-Force Genesis
III: NIGHTMARE DRIVING ON THE TRASH GAME ROAD - Driverio
IV: AGE OF DEVELOPER STUPIDITY - Game Achievements "Stroke The Pet" Series
V: TAKE THE TROPHIES, I DON'T WANT THEM! - Rocketio
VI: SUPERDISASTROUS SPACE SHOOTER SQUAD - Super Rebellion
VII: MYRON SAID "CRAPPY HOLIDAYS" - Breakthrough Gaming: The Continents
VIII: BREAK-TURD GAMING...AGAIN - Project: Summer Ice - Pinball
IX: DEEP SPACE ATROCITY - Deep Space Anomaly
X: ZAKYM'S DISASTROUS RETURN - Rocketio 2 and 3
XI: CRAPPER BOWL AND THE END OF BREAKTHROUGH GAMING - Breakthrough Gaming's Football 2
XII: ALPHA MORON - (Alpha Warrior by S-Mobile)
XIII: THE DEEP FREEZE - (SoulFrost by Xitilon)
XIV: WEBNETIC'S FIRST SHOOTER - (Space Defend by Webnetic)
XV: ONE BUTTON CATASTROPHE - (B Cannon by Xitilon)
XVI: CLASH FORCE? MORE LIKE TRASH FORCE! - (Clash Force)
Well, it's time to play Taurian Defense by Initus Interactive. I don't know what to expect now.
3 Tutorials, 3 Missions.
Try to use the NERV-UN VTOL for your first mission.
The first thing to do in this game is to select the mission you're gonna play. Typical of these "Done-on-the-cheap" type of games. Pick the level you want, forget the level progression.
If Desert Strike was a turd, this is how it will look like.
During the first and second levels you'll be taking control of the Banshee VTOL, which is the "Helicopter" type aircraft capable of standing in one place, While the Left Analog Stick is to move in a certain path, the Right Analog Stick is to rotate in order to make the Banshee move to a specific direction. Your main weapon is a vulcan cannon backed up with missiles for Air-to-Air targets. By pressing Y you'll enter the Air-to-Ground mode, making the camera focus on the ground and it will switch the AA missiles to Air-to-Ground ones. Throughout your missions you'll be switching from Air-to-Air to Air-to-Ground, unfortunately, missiles are the only weapons effective against ground targets when you're using the Banshee. To add one final weapon to your arsenal, you have a special weapon which can be used with the X button. In this case is an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon that can take down multiple aircraft with one shot if you're close enough. While most games have the throttle functioning as long as you hold the respective button (Ace Combat for example), here is more of a dash button like if it was a platformer, and to make it worse, you have to wait to recharge the dash gauge to use it again.
Into the arena we climb, we look to the sky.
Into the arena we climb you and I.
While the first mission with the vehicle is a Tutorial, the second one is the combat based mission. In this case is a base defense mission where the objective is to survive 7 waves and a boss while keeping any damage to the base as low as possible. Sounds simple, but the game will make things as impossible as it can. To begin with, your vulcan weapon overheats,
Refueling helps, but still can't fix the problems.
Since your missiles are limited, you'll be forced to return to the refueling drone constantly, but the worst part is that you have to do that right in the middile of the action. Unlike the Return Lines from the Ace Combat games where the mission time stops when you're landing and changing weapons and resumes when you're back in the combat area, in Taurian Defense the enemy takes advantage of your condition as your need to reload will give them free shots against your base since you have to refill your weapons mid-wave. This isn't the "Head for the return line and refuel", no, this is "Get on the drone and refill as much as you can because they're bombarding your base and you're not done with the Wave, and there's more Airstrikes, Dropships and fighters on the way", and that's gonna happen very often. While you are granted pods for shield or additional firepower like three way fire or a laser support, but these are temporary and they will deplete during your mission and most of the times they'll go when you need them the most, for instance when the game says "Airstrikes Incoming", and with depleted weapons 'cos you'll be spamming missiles to counter the chaff spamming of the bombers and a vulcan that overheats rapidly, you'll be almost useless and the inevitable will happen: Your base will be under attack again, and again and again. While your base can take a good amount of damage, having broken weaponry like these just makes the game worse. Speaking of bad and worse, if you die once, once single death will end the game.
Once you've reached the 8th wave (if you're lucky enough to survive this mess), you'll face a boss, but once it makes a single pass through the combat zone it will disappear and the mission will end. No matter if you have enough weapons or energy, you will never take the boss down...
"Cheat to Win"...What an irony.
...unless you cheat. Yeah, believe it or not, the game grants you a cheat code to complete the level and believe it or not you have to input the cheat code to complete the Wave-based missions. As soon as the Wave 1 message appears input on the D-Pad: Left, Down, Right, Up, Left, Left, Down, Down, Right, Right, Up, Up and you'll be invincible and with infinite missiles. The last time I've used a cheat on a game was DECADES ago during the "HVZSM" password on Vortex, but VERY RARELY on a modern console (being Airheart: Tales of broken Wings the lone exception).
No matter how honest you are as a player, Taurian Defense's idea is simple: "Cheat to fully clear a level" pretty much like Psygnosis said "If at first you don't succeed CHEAT" on Shadow of the Beast. I've never heard of something as fucked up as that, and I mean it since I was able to complete the final mission of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown with regular aircraft against those ADF-11 cheaterheads. Ironically, with the infinite missiles, it feels more like a game rather than having unfair advantages, as the missile hell you'll be spamming on the Airstrike bombers will barely counter their chaff spam.
New ship, and new rules follow your next missions.
On levels three and four, you'll be assigned to the F1A Interceptor, this ship is the fighter type aircraft. Like the Banshee, the Interceptor uses missiles for both Air and Ground along with the vulcan cannon. But unlike the Banshee, you have Air-to-Air and Air-to-Ground vulcan separated requiring you to switch between Air Intercept and Ground Intercept modes. Also, the Air-to-Ground vulcan has limited ammo although it won't overheat, but is frustrating that you have to reload since the Air-to-Ground vulcan is far more effective than the missiles against ground targets. For its special attack, the EMP is replaced with an Airstrike that summons a bombardment on the specified mark after the 5 second timer runs out. ¿Remember the refueling problem I've mentioned before? The air-based enemies will even have their free shot firing missiles against you. Curiously, stage 04 is the only "fun" stage of the game as it grants you plenty of time and lots of ground based targets just for the sake of blowing shit up. Curiously, it's the shortest mission of the game since it is divided in three segments: Two base attacks, and an attack against a carrier and a dreadnought.
Controlling Devastator is like putting wheels to a concrete brick.
Levels 5 and 6 puts you on a new ship called the X130 Devastator, a behemoth of power and incredible strength. Learning to use it is gonna be a problem. Have you had that feeling that your ship just don't want to move or moves waaay too slow? This ship is basically that feeling, too sluggish for normal movement, but with the afterburner gains a lot of speed. Like the Interceptor, it has an Airstrike like attack, but this time is an orbital strike attack that fires a laser from above, kinda like the Hammer of Dawn from the Gears of War series. If Devastator is already a problem, the game will exploit all the disadvantages of your ship in the sixth level of the game. First off, your missiles are useless on this stage because the game will throw you ground based targets that will destroy ALL your missiles with their lasers. No matter how much missiles you spam them, they will take down all of them, forcing you to use the air-to-ground artillery of the ship. Speaking of spamming, you'll be facing groups of small, fast fighters that will become annoying as hell, but the worse are gonna be the "Lightning Cruisers" which are fighters that uses mid-range lightning beams that will deal constant damage and they can't be hit with the Air-to-Air Missiles and they will deplete all your shield and energy before the small auto-fire cannons mounted on your ship take'em down first, but you'll go down before you do so. To make things even worse, fighting the Airstrike bombers is much worse since your missile firing rate is of four missiles on screen, the bombers will counter all of them with their chaff spamming. Unless you cheat, you will never complete the mission.
After clearing all the levels of the game you'll probably expect an ending, or at least a congratulatory screen. Well, take a wild guess...
Sorry, your ending is in another videogame.
Here's a trip back to the title screen.
NOTHING! Like the programming, they gave a fuck about congratulating the player for reaching the end of the game, also, you'd surely got all the achievements after clearing the final level, making the game useless after unlocking everything. But you know what's worse? The fucking lies on the advertising blurb claiming to be inspired by the top-down arcade games of the 80's. Well, that's HORSESHIT 'cos I've played old games with much better quality than this disgrace.
Devast-o-Cam™ puts players in the middle of the action!
Graphically, this game makes an effort to look fairly decent despite its done on the cheap nature with solid looking geography and surface detailing even if its the same desert texture bitmap with different colors for the island and snow landscape, the ships look quite good, especially the Interceptor which reminds me of the Colony Wars series. It is worth to mention how they changed the camera view for Devastator's Air-to-Ground artillery, as if the game tries to put the player right in front of the action. As for the sound department, we have this mix of Industrial and Synthwave trying to be retro but feels more like the typical industrial generic music done to complete a game.
Despite the mission was done, there'll be mental scars to be healed.
Taurian Defense is a game that tries to do a lot of things, but is clearly that the game wasn't tested at all due to the flaws I've mentioned. Sadly, that's what happens when a shmup is made by people who thinks they're Sega and Tecno Soft and are an unsurmountable trash to put your hands on your head in disbelief.
Why the bad programming? Why the fucking lies on the advertising blurb? So many questions about trash gaming that beg for an answer...
Sounds correct, for now.