Hope you like shooting the same ship over and over
Graphics: Exquisite menus, nice-looking vector ships. Smooth scrolling stars that are nothing new, but feel very polished, and compliment the smooth, peaceful music nicely.
Style: Everything about the look and feel of this game is near perfection. No story at all, though, and the "missions" are just quick dogfights, so it's not like this is an epic universe to explore. Gotta give the author props for all the polish, though.
Sound: Nothing I didn't like, and a whole lot I loved. Like the graphics, the sounds and music in this game simply exude class. Peaceful, serene newage music completes the mood.
Violence: You blow up spaceships. Nothin' wrong wiht that. But the frustrating gameplay may move you to real-world violence...
Interactivity: The controls are decent, okay? The real problem here is that the gameplay sucks, despite competent controls. How can a game with good controls have bad gameplay? Well, let me walk you through it:
First, you start with a tiny little pea shooter that can't do shit. You are then given a small ammount of omeny and told to purchase upgrades. No matter what you pick, it barely increases your combat abilities at all, but it's a token gesture on behalf of the author to create something that CMG will sponsor. All the new Flash games are using purchasable powerups, dontchaknow.
Next you embark upon "mission 1" Mission 1 features you clicking the mouse on a menu button and then INSTANTLY dying because, SURPRISE! There's an enemy shooting at you and you have to hurry up and put your hand on the arrow keys!
But the challenge doesn't stop just because you've defeated the deadly control scheme! No, now you find yourself firing very slow bullets at an enemy that then blankets a random half of the screen with missile fire! FUN! When you finally take this fucker down (don't purchase "shoot spee" powerups because the only way to do it is to fire a shot that will connect after he goes off the bottom of the screen and comes back on from the top!) you have to quicky get under the scrap metal that drops (half the time overlapping a string of last-second missiles) and you'd bvetter be quick, or else this run was ALL FOR NOTHING and you earn 0$ for your troubles!
Do this same damn mission three times sucessfully, and you've got enough to buy another insignificant powerup! But that rarely happens because if you die once, your money gets halved. So basically, you're gambling, and the odds are against you.
Mission 2 features two of these ships, which means they blanket the entire screen with missiles. They launch randomly (after sitting perfectly still for several seconds for your benefit) so you will have a couple of waves before they will definitely kill you. But at this point, your weapons are so weak, you have almost no hope of destroying them.
I guess in order to make the game actually be PLAYABLE you need to buy the chaingun, which costs thousands of dollars. Good luck with that.
Humor: None.
Overall: Yeah, you know what? Gameplay is everything, fucker. The challenge is too random, the player's options are too limited, progress is too unpredictable, and the goal is too unattainable.
Like 90% of Flash s'mups I've seen, you've got the weapon speeds bass-ackwards. Enemy shots should be slow enough that the player can dodge between them, and player shots should be fast enough that the player knows how to hit the enemy predictably. That's called putting the player in control.
There's more to control than getting the buttons to work. I need to be able to plan my attack and react to the enemy's. I can't do that if I have no idea where the fuck the enemy is going to be by the time my shots reach him.
I'm sorry I'm so pissed off, this is just a really frustrating and pointless game. It's a shame because you put so much style and pizzazz into it, but you ruined it. You dropped the ball in playability. I want you to go play Raiden for an hour and think about what you've done.