Halo: Spartan Assault Review

Time sure does fly when you are playing and making games! Back in April, I wrote out a preview of Halo: Spartan Assault. Summer is here and so is the Steam sale allowing me to finally get my hands on 343 Studios twin stick shooter. Does it live up to the it’s first person predecessors or is it a pocket sized version of the Halo series?

Halo: Spartan Assault feels like a pocket sized version of the Halo series. This is not always a bad thing though because the levels have a clear focus and doesn’t waste your time. The campaign is pretty long and has a great amount of re-playability to get the highest points. You can also add skulls to your campaign making it even more challenging and will give you more experience points to use better weapons.

The games story is perfect for fans of the lore but as someone who hasn’t followed it since 3, it really didn’t mean much to me at all. You essentially go through the missions of Spartan Palmer that involve killing X number of this and defend this for X amount of time. The level structure isn’t all that inspired and the level designs aren’t all that interesting. The graphics, however, are fantastic and a lot of polish went behind the particles and textures. The music is also well orchestrated but most of the time I ignored it because they never really fit with what was happening in game. Unlike the other games (that I’ve played) the music was punchy during combat and really fit the mood while in Spartan Assault, the slower music would be taking place during fire fights which just felt bizarre.

The gameplay itself is really solid and works well with the feeling of the FPS Halo’s, but top-down. As I said in my preview, it would be nice to jump around in order to dodge enemy attacks are traverse the areas that seem to be able to be traversed. The game limits itself to one plane which focuses gameplay nicely but flying enemies and certain points of elevation make it difficult to not want to jump around. Spartan Assault is also a much more slower twin stick game in pace which makes the game feel longer and less chaotic than it is. There will be points where you are being shot at all angles but the game doesn’t feel like you are in any danger because the enemies are slow and low in numbers. Certain levels, like the vehicle levels and defending levels, are very fun but their are some exceptions. One level in particular was designed so poorly that I didn’t have to move away from my turret throughout the entire level. A rare occurrence but in game with a great amount of polish makes this very noticeable.

Halo: Spartan Assault is a good game but could have been so much more. It is disappointing to see 343 Studios make a game that has a great amount of production value in cutscenes but little in-game. I’m hoping to see more game studios take this route with their IP’s though.

 

7.5/10

 

 

Hyper Princess Pitch: Review

Hyper Princess Pitch is not exactly a twin stick game but it is a top down shooter and obvious shout out to the arcade classic, Smash TV. The game was created by some guy named Daniel in Game Maker stating that is a a remake to the old DOS game, Operation: Carnage. Hyper Princess Pitch is a spinoff to his game Garden Gnome Challenge where Pitch plans to take down Mecha Santa.  Princess Pitch is angry at the mechanical being for not bringing her presents as a child so she plans on killing him.

 

There isn’t much of a story and really isn’t that much game. You can beat it in under thirty minutes but the multiple difficulties and multiple areas should keep players coming back. There is also a secret stage that will take quite some time to unlock for intense players. I forgot to mention that this game is extremely fun to play and easy to pick up. You control with the arrow keys and shoot pressing X and change weapons with Z (Or vice versa, I don’t remember). Your default weapon has unlimited ammo and shoots bricks while your other two weapons, ice and rainbow are limited. The ice is short range and the rainbow shot splits into a line when shot hitting more enemies and bouncing off walls.  There are multiple power ups that enhance your weapons and yourself.  There are also multiple power ups that just blow things up and clear the board. Once you beat the game, their are multiple secret combos that make the game easier and more fun. Getting this power ups is essential because the difficulty, even on normal, is extremely hard.  Bosses act similar to bullet hell games and enemies come from all directions.  The game is never frustrating because it rewards power ups quickly and it always feels fair. The only issue I have with the game is the shooting controls.  It would have benefited from a twin stick layout or a Binding of Issac control scheme.  I understand that it is aiming to be retro but like I said in my remake article, times change and you need to move with the times.

Hyper Princess Pitch is a very good looking retro game.  The pixel art is minimal and lacks the animation that we have seen from newer titles like Sword and Sworcery and Shovel Knight.  However the explosions and weapon animations look great and the game sounds great.  This game provides more value and polish than most video games that you pay for. That’s right folks, this game is free as well as some of Daniel’s other games on his website HERE.

 

Renegade Ops: Review

If you were following the Twin Stick Diaries, you would have seen that last week I posted a preview on Avalanche Studio’s vehicular top down shooter Renegade Ops.  The small team at Avalanche Studios have developed one of the purest arcade style video game to our home entertainment systems. They successfully balanced difficulty and gameplay making it feel like a challenging arcade game as opposed to a blatant quarter muncher.

Renegade Ops looks to bring back the classic 80’s action films with their story and gameplay. Like the title states, you play as the Renegade Ops, an anti-terrorist group who are working on taking down the evil organization known as Inferno. As I said in the preview, each of the operatives has a special set of abilities like invulnerability, disabling weapons and heavy artillery.  These special abilities are unleashed by the press of the button once your meter fills up. You can also level up your characters and earned perk points by completing quests and side quests.

Renegade Ops does feel like it is aimed toward cooperative play which is not a bad thing by any means but even on normal mode, you will die a lot and rely on your perks to get through stages. Luckily the game is fun enough to go through missions over and over again. The game is also great looking and driving through environments and flipping your car over is actually pretty fun.  This can lead to unwanted deaths though because of the lack of control on your car.  The helicopter does control very similar to the car without the flipping over but ultimately feels the same, which isn’t bad.

As I said before, the game is fun enough to go through the game more than once but their isn’t a whole lot of variety in quests and upgrades. Most of the quests are similar with different text, kill this and collect that.  Boss battles are also uninspired and you will face the same one over and over again (three times in one level!).  Going through the lush and colorful environments and seeing the beautiful explosions will also keep players driving around in their little car that could. Twin stick gamers need to pick up this game and developers who want to make twin stick games need to play them too.  It is by far the purest form of twin stick game and how they should be designed and played aside from the precise movement controls.

Score: 9/10

 

Shadowgrounds: Review

I’m going to try and not repeat myself to much from my original Impressions article so if you feel like you are missing something or just forgetting what I wrote previously check it out here. https://twinstickdiaries.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/shadowgrounds-impressions/

Shadowgrounds is a fun top-down shooter but looses steam quickly.  A lot of environments look similar making it easy to get lost.  The uninteresting story and characters don’t help the games play-ability either.  I previously stated that the dialogue was poorly written and voice acted, feeling like a bad B-rated movie.  Normally I tend to enjoy these campy cut scenes but the games story tends to be “go here” and “do this.”  Shadowgrounds doesn’t escape any of the cliches of science fiction stories and their is no pay off at the end of the game either.

With all that being said, Ganymede and it’s invaders tend to be varied enough to remain challenging and fun.  Collecting upgrade parts also drop from enemies just enough to upgrade all of the weapons you’d like but not quite to the point where you can upgrade everything.  The weapons are also varied enough and useful enough for players to not just roll through all of them. However, sometimes the amount of damage weapons deal feel random.  There is a particular enemy that is quite strong which I have used various types of weapons to take it down.  Sometimes it takes two grenade launcher shots or it takes five.  Shot gun shots can kill it in less than five shots and other times it’s more than seven.  Perhaps this is because it is difficult to tell is shots are hitting enemies and I am missing. That alone is a problem.

The biggest flaws of the game are the lack of boss battles and the game pad controls.  The lack of boss battles is really frustrating because enemy variation is a key component to a twin stick shooter.  Shadowgrounds only has about twelve chapters which, I believe, should each have a boss battle.  Sadly, Shadowgrounds has less than five bosses.  The game pad controls defaults to the left stick moves and the left trigger turns left and right trigger turns right.  The game has custom controls and two other control types that does not involve the right stick to aim. So, technically, this game is not a twin stick shooter when it is definitely designed to be one.  As I said before, the game allows you to customize your controls but it wasn’t allowing me to do so making me stick with the PC controls.

Shadowgrounds is a good and polished game but has too much problems with it’s story and pacing.  The games story and environments are generic and uninteresting making it hard to keep the player engaged.  The enemies are varied enough, as well as the guns, but the lack of boss battles makes level completion unrewarding. I am interested to see if Frozenbyte’s sequel makes improvements to this underwhelming shooter experience though.

Score: 7/10