Death By Cube [XBLA]

[Zaarock]

When checking the new xbla games that came out, I noticed this game and thought meh, another crap arena shooter to add to the list. I sorta liked the graphics in the ad so I tried the trial and surprisingly the game seems pretty damn good for an xbla game (got two star rating from xbl users though heh)

It doesnt play like a generic arena shooter as it mostly works on the two major "gimmicks" in the game:
1. You have a teleport-dash move which allows you to go through enemies and bullets, enemies near your dash line will be stunned and cant fire/move
2.you have a giga-wing style shield with which you can aim where the bullets fly out, and by holding the shield you can hit enemies close range with the bullets while charging it. The shield only works on bullets.

You have to use both of these in unison, especially if there are loads of bullets on screen(I guess this might be the reason for the low ratings): you can use the shield while dashing so if there are loads of bullets you need to charge the shield, then dash when releasing and youll have time to recover after the release.

There is a scoring system where your kill score is multiplied if you kill the enemy at close range, doing kills like this also raises the overall multiplier pretty significantly. Not sure about other things affecting the multiplier yet. You get powerup items by capturing loads of bullets, killing lots of enemies at the same time and stunning many at the same time.

You can choose from various play types for your character, one has spread shot at the start while another has enhanced shield or dash, etc. Using a specific type seems necessary at some levels.. eg. shield type is obviously the best choice for bullet hell levels.

The levels get pretty difficult and are varied in style: in some you need to survive to a set score without dying, in some you need to kill a certain amount of enemies and in some you have to defend/destroy base structures. They are all centered around score attack, you get medals for set score amounts, nothing for just surviving. I havent seen any bosses yet but more enemy types keep showing up, I'm in the middle of world 4 atm.

Ive had one survival level so far which was essentially bullet hell, that was pretty fun. Actually had to learn to melee the enemies with the bullets to get to the score limit before dying to raise the multiplier enough. Last level I cleared had only some sort of rotating laser enemies, I had to stun and kill each one quickly or the whole arena would have been flooded with lasers aiming at me.

I like the graphical style and music as well, nice and simplistic. The music for each level type changes in the later worlds btw.

Anyone else playing this?

[rancid3000]

I was just going to post about this. You had almost the same feelings as I did with this game. From the videos it looked pretty cool but kinda gimmicky. I'm not really an arena shooter fan but this one seemed different. I checked out the video posted on the shmups twitter today and downloaded the demo. After playing the demo I had to buy it! The gameplay is different and unique like Zaarock said. There also seems to be 72 different types of unlockable characters and other upgrades. You use coins earned by clearing the stage to buy these. It gets addicting. The demo lets you do all of this so if you're interested definitely get the demo. I'll post again after I've had some more time with it.

[BrightSuzaku]

Is it better than 0 Day Attack on Earth in your opinion(s), or have you not played that? I found 0 Day Attack to be "meh", but it could have been improved with better wingman AI (I swear, they're all drunk kamikaze pilots!).

Then again, I'm no arena shooter fan, so maybe I won't find this fun. It looked incredibly interesting, however, and I've been interested in it for some time...

[Malc74]

I bought it (had some spare points to burn), but I'm still pretty "meh" about it. Maybe it'll grow on me after a few more plays, but after playing it for about half an hour or so I went back to Decimation X and had a lot more fun.

[rancid3000]

I only played the 0 Day demo so I can't really comment too much. I really did not like the 0 Day demo. So based of that, yes, this is better. After playing a little more here is what I can tell you. You can see a lot of what I've written in the video from the shmups twitter which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZWwXztEzp8 This person isn't the best at it but they have the right ideas.

Music: I really like the music. It is a sort of well produced video game style metal. Not as heavy as the Guilty Gear soundtrack. More like power metal haha.

Difficulty: This game is definitely hard. There are three types of stages. The first type is called "kill all enemies," where you have to, you guessed it... kill all the enemies. There is a counter at the top of the screen to show how many enemies are remaining. The next is survival where you have to, you know, survive. The last type you have to defend your base or bases. There is a lot of strategy involved. The strategy come in the way of using your dodging and shield but also which player you chose. There are many different robots to play with, each with different attributes. It's up to you to decide which one to use for which stage. You unlock these new characters using coins you receive from the levels you complete.

Medals: Where it gets interesting is this. You can clear a level and get the bronze medal usually by doing the bare minimum ie not playing for score. However silver and gold medals are awarded based on how you score. So there is always a sort of juggling act between completing the objective of the stage and playing for score. The higher the medal, the more gold coins you will get.

Scoring: Here is what I can see so far about the scoring. The multiplier starts off at 1 and every enemy you kill will be worth 10 points. You increase the multiplier by killing the enemies at close range and like Zarrock I'm not too sure how much catching enemy bullets or using your dash more affect the multiplier. So if the multiplier is at 10, each enemy you kill is worth 100 points. You get the idea.

Power ups: You get power ups a few ways. One way is to cause "mass confusion" by using your dash move to confuse a lot of enemies at once. The second way is to collect bullets from multiple enemies. The third way is to kill multiple enemies at once. When you perform one or more of these moves, the power ups will be left on the ground for you to pick up. The only other power up i have seen is the laser, where you shoot out this lightsaber-ish laser and kill everything in sight.

Replay: I found myself going back to levels I only got the bronze or silver medals and trying to get the gold. This way you receive more coins to unlock levels and characters. From what I can tell, there seems to be many areas with many stages to each area. I have not gotten past the 2nd area yet. There are 8 areas. In the first area there are 72 stages to complete and in the second area there are 29 stages to complete. That's a ton right there already!!!

Graphics: I personally like them. You can see for yourself in the video.

I could keep going but I think you get the idea. Check out some videos and play the demo for yourself. In my opinion it is worth the $10.

[TodayIsForgotten]

This is a pretty unique game. With the different robots makes for some good possibilities. I find the one hit death robot (red) is the best, since every shot is a multiplier. The only downside? Is he dies in one shot.

The levels are varied enough to where things don't become stale. Some of the survival modes get a bit tedious as you're basically just dashing (stunning) enemies and evading during this process. Not much thought goes into it. Most levels are killing enemies within a set time or once all the enemies are killed. Other levels are time attack, so there is some potential to score better. I really think what makes this game have any sort of replay value (minus what im saying in the next though) is the red guy. He changes the whole game with his one hit death.

I'd say its an above average game. I can't say if it has much replay value after the first day or so, other than maybe the different survival modes. I came out a bit more impressed than what i was expecting, so in terms of value that is a win.


As to the comment of is it better than 0day? for the value, yes. But they are different games within the genre.

[rancid3000]

This is a pretty unique game. With the different robots makes for some good possibilities. I find the one hit death robot (red) is the best, since every shot is a multiplier. The only downside? Is he dies in one shot.

The levels are varied enough to where things don't become stale. Some of the survival modes get a bit tedious as you're basically just dashing (stunning) enemies and evading during this process. Not much thought goes into it.

I'd say its an above average game.

As to the comment of is it better than 0day? for the value, yes. But they are different games within the genre.

I agree. The other thing that I noticed is that there is no bullet dodging. Most of the bullets are homing or there are too many to dodge. So you must either absorb them with your shield or some robots can cancel enemy bullets with their own shot.

[TodayIsForgotten]

Ya, there's about as much bullet dodging as you can get in a modern-day arena shooter (virtually none). Thats what makes the red guy so great though. He can cancel bullets and you have to either try to dodge or cancel their bullets or shield. He's super powerful.

[Zaarock]

Survived through all the levels now. Stuff gets pretty crazy in the last few worlds, took me a while to beat some of the levels. On to getting better medals now.

I also tried the multiplayer versus modes with two friends, theyre surprisingly good and polished.. I like using the high-risk character here as it makes me die in one hit but one shot from me kills anyone else. Staying further back, sniping shots through and then surprisingly dashing in the middle of the enemy and killing everyone with two aimed shots or a shield burst.. was quite a lot of fun. All the character types are balanced differently for multiplayer it seems.
The combat reminds me of Senko and VOOT in that its very much about the dashing(there is no dash freeze though and its really fast), except now youre tossing bullets back and forth with your shields while doing stuff, and dashing through someone acts as a "melee" attack as they get stunned, and if you have a pile of bullets with you youll cause a nice bit of damage right away. Mostly played deathmatch, the other modes are obviously meant for actual teams. Seems to have good netcode, I didnt notice much lag at all playing with some british guys. Playing 2v2 on base mode would probably be a lot of fun, not to mention the strategy involved in character combinations (eg. base types shield etc.)

[BrightSuzaku]

Right guys, you got me interested enough in trying out the demo as soon as I return to Live. Also, I really need to pop Senko/Wartech in soon, as I'm getting shmupped out of Mushifutari. e_e

[Zaarock]

Maxed out multiplayer ranking now.. (stops at 0.999) Multiplayer is really a lot of fun, I especially grew to like High score scramble. You get 200 pts for killing an enemy team member, 1000 for an NPC enemy (these are large, hardest types of enemies).
As I use high-risk type my multiplier raises by one each kill no matter the range (I think every type gets multiplier from player kills though?), so if I stay alive and snatch those kills I can get pretty huge scores. Biggest score I've gotten in a team is 130,000 (normal time limit) or such, but 1v1 with a good player is a lot of fun too. The NPC enemies can pose a threat if you use high-risk type, mostly those damn cubes which you need to stun to damage. they're a lot of fun to kill when you get the hang of it so its alright though. Most people run after the NPCs so its good to kill them before they get to it to raise your multiplier, and so on.

edit: oh yeah, it seems clear the game will get some pretty big DLC.. if you look at the world completion counters like 40% of the levels are missing. Also there are two characters missing. Somehow someone has the other one, which looks just like the robots you see when the game loads up.. looks like its a "Higher risk type" as it can get higher multipliers than should be possible (look at IO-1 and SIOS-1 on leaderboards), I'm guessing its something like you cant use shield/dash and die in one hit.