Score: 4
"decent, but has some things very wrong"
date: March 26, 2004
The graphics and sound are unimportant. They are good enough. No, my issue is with the control scheme and the lack of powerups. Firstly, there is no way to reconfigure the controls. There would be absolutely no problem with controls if users could reconfigure them. Secondly, spacebar, s and b? that's just not natural. Now, as for powerups, they are pretty uncommon, and as the shield is difficult to use because of the location of the key to use it and the fact that one can't shoot while in shield (what's the point of that anyway?) as well as the fact that the shield is pretty useless anyway (makes you invuln for a few seconds...Gigawing got this right, you didn't), it's generally not too difficult to die. And once you die, you lose *everything*, including the ship advantage. WTF? I could understand maybe lowering weapon and speed by 1 or even two levels to a maximum of the starting weapon power and speed, but reducing it to absolutely nil? That's just dumb. The weapon upgrades aren't even related either, graphically speaking. There are also some issues with collision detection (IE: the ship is actually bigger than it looks), which are further worsened by the bad control scheme. And once you get your speed up a few levels, it's pretty difficult to move without hitting something. Even tapping the keys moves the ship into enemy weapon fire or ships. And speaking of weapon fire, why is there a limit on the number of shots on the screen for your ship? Does that make any sense at all? It's just annoying to be trying to shoot enemies or bosses, and have the shots disappear before hitting anything. If it's an issue of rate of fire, reduce the rate of fire! I've seen it in other flash games, so it must be possible. Really, the things that make or break games of this genre are the control scheme and the ship upgrades, and it looks to me like it's pretty bad in both areas.
