A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks (english Version)

A fair warning: Dear reader, you will notice that my english isn't all that great. you may encounter obscure grammatical and word construction as well as a constant switching between american and british english. If you can't take this and understand the german language, then please wait till the german entry is uploaded.

You know, I'm one of those who don't have any of the modern home consoles. Neither a PS3 nor a XBox360 (and not even a Wii). My preffered gaming plattform still is the PC. I don't want to discuss about the whole console/plattform - war that is fought out there but I will comment on one game I played with my girlfriend on her PS3.

Imagine, if you will, an old school arcade space shooter that is fun, challenging and glourious retro without beeing outdated. This package of pure gaming fun is called "A space shooter for 2 bucks". I don't think that anyone would be surprised if I tell you now that the price for this game is 2$ on PSN. This game entertained us more than an modern game like "Heavy Rain" or "Dead Space", I know it's a completly different genere but it's still more fun. The story is very simple: you - an arnold schwarzenegger like alien hunter with a british ai sidekick and who's rappid firering of one liners are only topped by the loose finger at the trigger. Youre enemy - a bunch of alien scummbags who need to die because... well... they are aliens (of course!). The game is parted into multiple sectors, each sector is a vertical scrolling stage with lots of enemys and a final boss. You will have to deal with 5 main bosses and a fist full of mini bosses. Each of the main bosses have an signature weapon wich you will get when you beat him. Also each normal enemy you kill will give you remnants the curency in the game. After each mission you can visit a shop where you can purchase upgrades for your ship (and you will also get some humorous dialogs with the storekeeper). Things you will want to buy are the upgrades for the main weapon and the remnant magnet to get more remnants out of a mission. Each special weapon you recover from a boss has it's own energy bar and you can get upgrades in the shop for this bars. Especialy the black hole weapon will come in handy because it devours small ships an projectils in a certain radius. You can use this to make yourself a temporarie safe spot on the screen.

Of course the game also have its down side. You will die and retrie several parts because you can easylie lose sight to your ship in the later levels because of the massive effects and the bulletstorms from enemys especialy in later levels. This isn't as bad as it sounds because each stage has checkpoints during the half waypoint and right before the stage boss. Also you will find yourself dieing over and over agian because of situations where you can do nothing but get hit and even the strongest energy bar has a limit and later on enemys relie on crowding on you, rushing you and cheap shooting you from slightly of screen. The bosses varie on their strength between easy going and fucking hard to impossible.

Overall you will get more out of youre 2$ by buying this game than you will get from most of the higher price point games. Please keep in mind it's an arcade game and not an full price high end game but it is fun an in my opinion this is all that counts.

My overall rating: 7.9/10 exploding alien ships
A fun game with some flaws and way to short but you will not regret buying.


If you really read through all of the text above I applaud you for suffering through all of my bad english. If you want leave a comment correcting me but please don't bash on my bad english. I will try to improve.