Good game, but would Steve really want this?
As well all know, Steve was a fantastic man with a passion for nature, especially that of Crocodiles, who's life was tragically ended by an accident involving a Stingray whilst filming a documentary about them, but we all need to pause for a second and think, Steve loved animals so much and he knew the dangers of having his life revolve around many dangerous ones...
Steve wouldn't want anybody to take vengance or prejudice on Stingrays just because one was his death, it was most likely in self defence because the poor man got too close, he would want his passion to live on and for people to realise that these are animals we're talking about, they don't have the intelligence of humans to kill without reason.
With that said, time to actually review this nicely made game.
So you've got your basic shooting-scrolling flash game, you find plenty of these here on newgrounds but this one actually has something to enjoy about it with an actual degree of difficulty, and no limitless bullets, there's actually a realistic pause between shots, thank heaven for that!
Naturally, the enemy of the game is the sting ray (after all, revenge and shit.) but the pleasent twist is that you get two kinds of enemies and a boss to fight against, and the enemies even conform to a timeline, in that you can perfect your timing and aim for the high score, with a few waves and stragedies to figure out.
The controls handled well, naturally you moved slow in water and bullets fire fine, one criticism may be that the pause between shots is too long to be able to keep up with the wave of fast moving, non shooting stingrays, but it's not horrifically short either so thankfully with the slow movement and bullet restrictions you get some REAL difficulty that makes this game fun.
One commonly used feature in these games is the use of smart bombs which wipe the area clean, this game twists the idea a little and implements "Croc bombs" that summons a crocodile to tween about the screen and kill every stingray it touches, Crikey! Save them for those huge waves of enemies you can't keep up with, and time them right to hit as many as possible! (The movement is always the same)
The let down however is the games overly simplistic graphics, graphics are easily acceptable but fall short with some rough edges visable on artwork and little animation, the stingrays literally don't move, they move left on your screen, at least until you meet the King of all Stingrays.
Don't let you stop you from enjoying this game though, if I get bored I might give this another shot and try to beat the boss this time, I'm interested to see the ending (after all, the game over screen is funny in a somewhat sadistic way.)
R.I.P. - Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter.
1942 - 2006
Crikey!
