1,000,000 Enemies vs You and some Power-Ups

September 26 2010

Imagine a world to invade, a ship to control, and another couple dozen ships out there to help you. It's a shoot'emup where you can become the bullet hell. Shoot1UP plays like any other shooter, but you will collect ships as well as more powerful weapon capabilities. When you have more ships, you can control the squadron formation with the shoulder buttons. Keeping them apart will give you a giant beam of death that is formed in the middle of your ships called the Plasma Auger. You will need a lot of ships in your squadron to survive, because the amount of enemies on screen during parts of the game makes it nearly impossible to keep all of your ships. The more ships you have will also dictate how powerful your weapon is: more ships, more firepower! After each level, the game will tell you the maximum amount of ships you acquired, and will also tell you how many were destroyed. Thanks, dick. But it's all in good fun, and this is another indie game that is made by people who love videogames.

Above: 1 or 2 players, tons of enemies, tons of points, lots of explosions. Confusing? Yes. Fun? Oh, yeah!

Boss battles in Shoot1UP are crazy. For one, the bosses are huge. Secondly, the all of your ships shooting at once, and the boss shooting at you, and some other enemy ships shooting at you as well, it's hectic. The license plate looking things in the above screen are scores, so you'll probably be running after them as well. The best part about all of this, the slow down is not there! Excellent. At certain points of the game, you will come upon some branches to choose from- do you want to go forward? Ok. Do you want to go into free-flight where there isn't a set path to go, where you just spin around and blast away at the enemy? That's fine, too. Whichever direction you choose to go, you will have lots of targets to take out.

Above: Bosses? Holy shit.

Shoot1UP looks like an old-school shooter from the late 80s or early 90s, but don't let that deter you. I know, there are games like Mars Matrix, Einhander, Raiden Project and Raystorm out there, and they look fantastic and play just as good as they look. Shoot1UP looks retro, but plays with the best of the shoot'emups. Trust me, I've played tons of 'em.

There are 17 in-game awards, similar to the achievement process but not counting towards your gamerscore or achievements, but like always, what are achievements, anyway? You can also unlock a different ship to use by shooting two "Mommy's Best Games Pies" in one game, these targets are bronze tokens that might look like pies in HD, but on an SDtv, it looks like a bronze token. The second ship has a slightly different look to its main weapon, but it's more or less a cosmetic look. This game has a 3/3 rating for "SEX" in the XBLI game ratings, but that may just be because there's a woman in it with boobs that are metallic domes or something. Nothing sexual, but if you see sexuality, I recommend professional help. Otherwise, for $1, Shoot1UP is a must-have for shoot'emup fans out there.

September 20 2010

Boogie Wings DataEast 1992

The Great Ragtime Show, another name for Boogie Wings, and a much better name at that, looks like it's a steampunk-ish shooter. The dated bi-planes and early 1900s feel to the whole deal, this game could also be filed under The Weird of the Week here at The World. It's a typical horizontal shoot'emup, and your plane is equipped with a giant hook that can catch-and-fling spike-covered mines at ground enemies as well as flinging them into airborne enemies.

The graphics are pretty dated, even for a game that is from 1992. The voice of the announcer is very pompous, and you feel the need, like many games, to reach into the machine and throttle the "person" who is talking. The controls are smooth and work very well when you are in your plane, but they make you crap your pants when you are shot down. When this happens, you are on foot, and can run as fast as your plane flew, and you can even run backwards (!), which is a site in and of itself. Eventually you can hop in a circa-World War 1 tank that feels fairly useless, but you will get your plane back. To avoid frustration it could be just as easy to do a suicide run while on the ground, and start over equipped with a plane again.

As far as your character goes, he's a muscle-headed dooshbag, which reminds me why I like shoot'emups: you will rarely see your character, only the ship he is flying. Sure you might hear his voice, but the characters are usually better heard and not seen. It's not a terrible game, but it is fairly forgettable.

Captain Tomaday Visco 1989

I'm pretty tolerant of bad videogames, and oftentimes I can find a silver lining in them. Captain Tomaday, sadly, is not one of them. Your role is Capt. Tomaday, a tomato with fists as his shooting weapons, who is tasked with destroying wave after wave of syrupy cute enemies ranging from baby dinosaurs to babies. Sure to have you reaching for your insulin kit as it's so cute and cuddly looking.

The game is a vertical scroller, and sometimes without even a boss battle happening, the scrolling will stop and you will fight wave after wave or redundant enemies, over and over again. Capt. Tomaday also controls well enough as long as you don't hit one of the two "fire" buttons. One button controls each Disney-gloved fist. You can charge one while constantly tapping the opposite button until your fist starts glowing. This is a "super shot" power, which only kills whatever is directly in line of your fire. This would be helpful if a single shot did any noticeable damage, and double-fist firing does a little bit more damage than just one fire.

Speaking of Boss Battles, they are tedious and long. Each boss has layers to fight after defeating one layer, I think one of my boss battles was two minutes long, and it was boring and lifeless. At one point my Capt. turned into a baby. Which is weird, because earlier in the game I was fighting a baby that turned into a monster. I'm sure the storyline explains that deal, but to me it was fairly meh and silly. However, your kids could play this game, and you would have no worries at all about them seeing super violence and blood. Just be prepared for them to have some freaky dreams. This may be a silver lining, but it's only the silver lining around a cyanide capsule, which will come as sweet oblivion after playing Captain Tomaday. It sucks. Big time.