Dear, oh dear, Square Enix, why did you stoop so low? I mean, a company that bases itself on quality gaming should never have a problem releasing games that the masses want to play, but this? This has to be one of the worst examples of the twin stick shooter genre out there at the moment and yes, I’m even including I Heart Shift in this.
The concept is an easy one; Aliens take over the earth and you and your team of 4 aircraft have to destroy them all within a strict time limit. Yep, that’s right, you have a time limit for destroying aliens, which would be fair enough in an arcade cabinet where they need to make up their losses by people pummelling in money to play. Oh, and about the so called team, the other aircraft do nothing but follow you around unless you are very lucky and play one of the very rare multiplayer sessions which are few and far between.
The bullets stop within a few feet of your ship meaning you have to get up close and personal with the alien ships which basically just sit there waiting to be destroyed while whipping out linear missiles and tentacle attacks which become very easy to predict after 10 minutes of game play. But to be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to get very far.
I found myself getting bored very quickly and only bothered playing further in order to give at least a semblance of a review for this game. It is apparent to me that the arcade titles are becoming increasingly lackadaisical in recent months with only a couple of gems shining through which is why I’m glad you get to try before you buy.
The graphics are not too shabby for the most part until you look at the background. The cities look as though they have been lifted straight from Google earth and the water effects, well let’s just say that real water should not look like scrunched up cellophane moving back and forth with the help of a weak hairdryer.
Like all Square Enix games there is a levelling up system that would be fun if the game didn’t penalise you straight back to the first rank if you decide you fancy having a cuppa and watching telly for a while. When you quit the game halfway through a level your rank resets. I mean how annoying is that? While we’re on the subject, the achievements, heh, any game that awards an achievement for getting to the title screen is just making sure that your friends see that you have it and you have no way of removing the gamerscore from your achievement screen. Now to me this just screams of forced marketing. You should be able to remove all traces of this game if you want to because all other achievements don’t come into play until you complete it and I can’t see many people doing that unless they have a gamerscore addiction.
I couldn’t even get a chance to play this games multiplayer section as there were no other players available, by that I don’t mean too many people were playing at one time, quite the opposite in fact. There were absolutely no other people playing any time I tried to get into the multiplayer section.
Oh, and here is the best part, the day the game was released they released DLC in the form of new levels. New levels? I mean come on, at least leave it a couple of weeks before demanding you pay for content that should have been included in the game to begin with. It seems to be a growing trend with games to do this and unless the game is something special to begin with, and trust me this game is not special at all, in fact I would go so far to say that for all its fancy graphics and large publisher company it’s not worth the code it was written with.
There are games out there today that prove that fantastic content and game play can be found in arcade titles, I mean come on folks, take a leaf out of the indie developers book and make something for the gamers, it shouldn’t be that hard! In fact it’s really common sense, find out what people like and improve on it to bring them a rich gaming experience that makes them want more.
How Square Enix could have allowed themselves to publish this I will never know. It’s just not something I could ever recommend to you. If you truly need your Square Enix fix then pick up Final Fantasy XIII and avoid this drivel at all costs. Honestly, I cannot stress this enough just now with these arcade titles; use the trial version before you buy and save yourself some money until you find something truly worth the cash.
VideogameUK verdict: 2/10 and that’s just because no matter how bad it is it’s not NBA Unrivalled or the Warriors: Street Brawl.
