Titan Attacks (Steam)

[Jeneki]

Since no one else started a topic for this one yet, I'll get one going. This is a out now on Steam.

Titan Attacks is a two-way movement shooter with stages that borrow from Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, Centipede, etc. Shot type starts with one bullet on screen at a time, so aiming is important early on. Later on you can powerup with extra bullets on screen and attachments that give extra firepower, to the point you can spam shots almost as fast as you want. Movement can be done with standard digital controls, or the mouse which makes it play more like a paddle game such as Demons to Diamonds.

It's from Puppy Games, the same ones who made Revenge of the Titans, a RTS/Tower Defense game. Their previous game had a decent learning curve (or at least, in the Steam forums many people complained it was too hard) so I had high hopes for a challenging game. Unfortunately, this one is actually pretty easy. I didn't have any real problems until I was 3/4ths through the second loop. You can buy more shields (which act as lives) between each level, which removes most of the risk of game over until you are quite far into it.

Enemy shots are divided amongst all of the enemies on screen, thus if you are down to a few enemies left they will spam more bullets at you. This becomes a problem with certain enemies that drop explosives that linger for a bit to restrict your movement: You can only shoot straight up, so when the area directly under an enemy is always exploding and that enemy doesn't move, there is no way to attack it unless you are willing to eat a hit or waste a smartbomb. I can easily rebuy a shield point after the wave, but it still feels cheap to make the last enemy completely impossible to attack.

Scoring is pretty mundane. A multiplier increases as you play until you get hit, at which point it resets. Sometimes an enemy will start to crash instead of exploding right away; if you shoot it again before it lands you get some extra points. Also there are bonus UFOs and parachuters that you can catch. The loop bonus is completely ridiculous, which literally takes your entire score and doubles it.

Still, it has an interesting art style. I got a couple bucks worth of entertainment out of it which is all it cost me anyway.

[mjclark]

Apologies in advance for being so negative butI tried Titan Attacks and found it to be poor sorry shit.
Hyperspace Invaders Zero retro mode does this much much better both visually and mechanically.

[Observer]

Or you could all go and buy Super Crossfire by radiangames. It's not on Steam (yet) but it's DRM-free

[BPzeBanshee]

Apologies in advance for being so negative butI tried Titan Attacks and found it to be poor sorry shit.
Hyperspace Invaders Zero retro mode does this much much better both visually and mechanically.

This. I haven't bought it myself (didn't have online cash, and then when I did I forgot) but I liked the demo and it's had updates recently to run better on legacy PCs which I approve.