Jul 23, 2006
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Return to Sector 9 is a top down shooter. At heart at least. it's really simple at that. But it's another game that I've spent a few days immersed in, and this is because the longer you play you unlock abilities to play better and longer. special weapons, more lives, paint jobs, and more ships (15 in all!) are all yours, if you play enough. Also the game has mutiple modes that you unlock as you play. The game starts with only "Return to sector 9" available to play, but with enough points you unlock such games as "Windmill", "Jellyfish", and "Last stand". They're all variations on the top down shooter (well, and missle command) but some are survival, some are rescue / collection, some have boss battles, and some are just a great excuse to use an old crazy miner accent while playing. The game awards you for how far and how many points you get in each mode, and then you can submit the scores to a high score board. The game is not very deep at all, but a lot of content makes this a very fun game to have around. For starters, you're always moving forward, but now you get a little control over speed. You want that increased control because you're trying to fly as close as you can to the walls. Why? scraping against the walls gives your ship more energy. Energy? Yes, energy to power your shield and "zero-pity high-powered aggregate free-electron laser beam Defender Cannon". Yeah, Jetman with a laser cannon. And you need that laser cannon because there are turrets and hoppers tanks and imperial drones all around, and they're shooting at you. I also hear that there's a giant enemy core somewhere at the end of the level, but I can't get more than 30 km in yet... When you finish (usually by death) it gives you a lot of statistics about the last round, including jugglement. I actually asked the maker of the game what exactly jugglement is, and it's how many times you can hit airborne enemies with low powered lasers before they hit the ground. The game has a couple of cute things like that which you can do. Even tho it's a really simple game, it's enough to be really fun. I've been obsessed with it since I've downloaded it (even played it at the drive-in during Indiana Jones), and I suggest it as a good game to waste a few minutes during a break with. Labels: thrust burst grind umlaut laser jet man Giant Robots! Totally freaking awesome, right? Well, yeah... This game follows in the footsteps of Virtua On and Silver Knights by being an arcade-type action game which puts you in the cockpit of Giant Robots. Visually, each robot is based off of models from the Gundam Universe (Mostly Gundam Seed), but the non-copyright naming scheme they have gone with names each robot after a version of Windows (Windom's) or Linux. The controls seem to be a bit easier to pickup then other games of this type, which may make it a bit more appealing for people who like the idea but aren't used to this style of play. There are only two things holding this game back from an even higher score: 1) There is little in the way of mode selection. There's a simple survival mode with a high score board, and then two team modes (one deathmatch type, one "kill the big airship" type) which are only good for trying to burnout your system, as there are no ways to configure these team modes, and the player number is ridiculous. By starting a server, you can have some mild configuration over the game, but it's still limited. 2) Limited content. Comes with two pilots by default (but they are cats, so thumbs up), and only 4 maps (2, if you consider that three of the maps are the same city at different times of day). But at least with 14 robots there's enough to keep it interesting. Hopefully with future updates more content will be added. For now, we just have to be happy with the ability to customize our own pilots (which is basically just a picture and voices / taunts) I mentioned a server, and that's because this game has online multiplay. Because of the limited single player, multiplay is where this shines, and the game is well suited for it. So, with Giant Robots, destructible buildings, flying mother ships, and customizable pilots, this game is definatly worth a shot. If there's an update with significant change, the game may even get a score upgrade. :D note: The version linked to is a English patched version of the game. The original is in Japanese only, but Mirror Moon is an organization which works to translate games for English audiences, and as the original game is updated, they will continue updating the English version. Labels: arcade, Giant, Gundam, Robots, Virtua On |
