(UN)HOLY WEEK SPECIAL
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.
It's "Holy Week", that time of the year where the topic is the Via Crucis, but everyone takes a vacation and hit the beach, except for your trusty videogame reviewer Sturmvogel Prime who takes a stand against trash games. Well, gaming has a lot of Via Crucis for the players in many forms: Bad gameplay, bad graphics, bad music or worse: All at once.
Time to do the Trashstorm's Via Crucis with a shmup from Pix Arts, a monstrosity simply called Galactic Invasion.
It's easy to make a lame shooter.
It's quick.
It's cheap.
It's shit.
We've hadn't stepped into the game and its starting to suck already. Just look. The Settings screen is as cheap and lazy as possible since it only covers sound, music and toggle Autofire on or off. At least Pix Arts pulled an effort by adding more options than Shmoup or Shooting Blocks and they addressed a problem with the sound adjustments by giving individual volume levels to the music and sounds.
With this said and done, let's go with the game. The game itself is an horizontal shooter where there's nothing else to do but to shoot your enemies, if you can of course. I say this because the first wave of enemies should be the easy popcorn type enemies that die in one shot, but Pix Arts on its "Sacred Wisdom" made the enemies resistant to your shots. If you're lucky, you'll be able to take 2 or 3 of them despite having a rapid firing rate. Fortunately, you're given power ups to take care of your enemies and getting your ship maxed up is fast since it only requires two Power up items to do so. There's no sub-weapon or bomb to support you, but in this game there's no need for that since there's not too much challenges to face in this game. Just the same wave of enemies repeating again and again and again until you give up and die, mostly by deliberate suicide. Speaking of death, you have an energy bar but it depletes fast because this game has the problem known as "Turridamage", where health goes down almost instantly and there's nothing you can do because there's no invincibility after taking a hit just like in Turrican. Also, there's no 1ups or continues either. Lose your 2 ships and that's all.
The closest thing to a boss battle.
While its not indicated, there's what appears to be boss battles since every once in a while you'll be pitted with a big sized ship that takes a lot of hits, and there is zero strategy on the battle, just keep your distance, fire nonstop until its gauge is empty and the stage enemy patterns will repeat despite being upper stages: Waving green popcorn ships, floating mines, a couple of gunships that take a few hits and enemies that spray bullets in multiple directions spawning from above the screen. After wasting money on this shit, you expect at least something to justify the purchase, right? Well, just 11 Trophies. 6 Bronze, 4 Silver and 1 Gold. No "Platinum" for this game, and it only requires 3000 points in your score to obtain all of them, but it will take you quite a lot of time as your enemies grant you from 1 to 10 points or so, being the floating mines the ones who give you more points. So, staying in this game is the Via Crucis that you and your PlayStation will be suffering, but thank me for taking that cross from you and bear it like I always do as a "Trash Game Reviewer" by playing and reviewing this fucking game so you and no one else have to.
Graphically, this game is not just a ripoff, is a god damned steal. Why? Because it was made using an apparently stolen "Shmup Baby" Unity asset and wallpapers. So the credit for the graphics goes to them instead of Pix RATS. The Shmup Baby's asset looks quite good on the ships and the enemies since these are not the classic retro pixel stuff. Despite the attention to details, everything feels like a mess. Too much space junk in the background, the asteroids that look more like if they're stage hazards instead of the background. To put it simple, a complete garbled mess that rather than being beautiful, it is a disorder in the depths of space.
The music is horrible. The title screen tries to be mysterious but with low notes and a wail that loops forever feels like a cheap 1 dollar horror videogame that you might find on Steam, and the background theme is a boring attempt to an upbeat tune that just goes on and on and on. I know this game is an endless shmup, but they could at least make 3 or 5 songs that repeat as a playlist while you suffer through this shit just for a few Bronze, Silver and Gold trophies?
Nothing like the debriefing quote from "Consequence of Power" to sum this game.
Galactic Invasion is DEFINITELY among the worst shooters I've played throughout this decade and with all reasons: Dull, repetitive, zero effort, made with stolen assets and what's more offensive, I've paid 5 fucking dollars for this game. Total Heresy in terms of gaming. I don't know why nobody bans Pix RATS from the PlayStation store. ¿Does Pix Arts bribe Sony or what?
Painful to play.
Hard to review.
Impossible to tolerate (for both player and Eda Scale).