Anyone remembers?
It's finally out here and I've to say that it lives up to my expectations.
As you may or may not know, The Red Star is a shmup/brawler hybrid and this combination works quite well here. One moment you're comboing and juggling your foes to death and in the next second you're thrown against an enemy boss which spits thousand of crawling bullet patterns at you, like in a manic shmup and that all this doesn't feel disjointed is rather impressive.
The controls are nicely laid out and it's easy to get the hang of everything, while it's still not too simplistic. The controls really feel spot-on and it's a blast to punch and shoot yourself through the game.
Apart from your three guns, that can be changed "onthefly" (and which have a heat meter, so you can't just shoot all the time), you have a healthy amount of melee moves at your disposal. Combos are pulled off rather easily and you also have the possibility to use a shield, which is good at absorbing melee attacks, but not so good for projectiles. It also has to regenerate after you've taken a few hits. It really dosn't feel tacked-on, it becomes an integral part of the gameplay, especially in later stages.
You're also given a health bar, which allows you to take some hits before biting the dust and you'll be thankfull for it, when the difficulty wrapps up. You do have unlimited lives, but I've your health reaches zero, you're sent back to the beginning of the stage.
The possibility to choose between three fighters at the beginning and an upgrade system, where you can allocate points to various stats after each level, are boosting the replay value.
The graphics and sounds are really nice imo. I just adore the art desgin and style (the art of the game is based on a Comic).
There's a two player option and the game is rather long for such an action title (I'm at level 15 right now, but I'm not too far away from the end).
There are also some weak points, for example the difficulty is nearly non-existent early on, although it gets hard in later levels. I just thought that it took to long (the first time I ran out of health was at a boss at stage number 12 or 13, don't remember exactly).
Part of the problem may be, that the combos can be pulled of so easily and some enemies are rather helpless against gunfire, so in the earlier levels, it's just a matter of pulling of those mindless combos over and over. Too bad that there doesn't seem to be any kind of difficulty setting to counterbalance this.
Another nitpick would be, that I haven't seen anything like a score until now, like in many other arcade games. You get a rating after each level, that determines how many points you can spend on upgrdaes, but it does look like you won't be playing it for highscroes, which smeels like wasted potential, cause you can hit and juggle dead enemies, so the potential for wrapping up combos and scores would be there.
There are also rather long interruptions (30s-1min) between levels, where the game is autosaving (can't be turned off) and where you're getting a brief intruduction for the next level, in form of a little text dialogue. It bothers me, that the game is loading the level, after you've clicked through all the text, would it be that hard to load the level data in the background, while you're reading the text snippets?
The fact that you have to start over levels from scratch when you die, is a bit problematic too, cause many of the levels are relatively long, with sub-bosses and such. You can't blast through them either, cause bralwer-like you have to kill all enemies on-screen before you can proceed.
Although not a fault of the game itself, the absence of a 60Hz option in my PAL version, makes me a little sad (at least it's full screen).
But all in all, while this may sound negative, these are all relatively minor quibbles in contrast to the sheer fun and excitment I had with this game. It's one of the best action titles a played in a while and for its budget price, I can't recommened it high enough.
I'm so eager to try out the other characters and the two player mode, so there's lots of replay value, despite the length of the game.
I'd agree with 1ups 8 out of 10 review.
Too bad that it took them so long to get this baby out.
It's finally out here and I've to say that it lives up to my expectations.
As you may or may not know, The Red Star is a shmup/brawler hybrid and this combination works quite well here. One moment you're comboing and juggling your foes to death and in the next second you're thrown against an enemy boss which spits thousand of crawling bullet patterns at you, like in a manic shmup and that all this doesn't feel disjointed is rather impressive.
The controls are nicely laid out and it's easy to get the hang of everything, while it's still not too simplistic. The controls really feel spot-on and it's a blast to punch and shoot yourself through the game.
Apart from your three guns, that can be changed "onthefly" (and which have a heat meter, so you can't just shoot all the time), you have a healthy amount of melee moves at your disposal. Combos are pulled off rather easily and you also have the possibility to use a shield, which is good at absorbing melee attacks, but not so good for projectiles. It also has to regenerate after you've taken a few hits. It really dosn't feel tacked-on, it becomes an integral part of the gameplay, especially in later stages.
You're also given a health bar, which allows you to take some hits before biting the dust and you'll be thankfull for it, when the difficulty wrapps up. You do have unlimited lives, but I've your health reaches zero, you're sent back to the beginning of the stage.
The possibility to choose between three fighters at the beginning and an upgrade system, where you can allocate points to various stats after each level, are boosting the replay value.
The graphics and sounds are really nice imo. I just adore the art desgin and style (the art of the game is based on a Comic).
There's a two player option and the game is rather long for such an action title (I'm at level 15 right now, but I'm not too far away from the end).
There are also some weak points, for example the difficulty is nearly non-existent early on, although it gets hard in later levels. I just thought that it took to long (the first time I ran out of health was at a boss at stage number 12 or 13, don't remember exactly).
Part of the problem may be, that the combos can be pulled of so easily and some enemies are rather helpless against gunfire, so in the earlier levels, it's just a matter of pulling of those mindless combos over and over. Too bad that there doesn't seem to be any kind of difficulty setting to counterbalance this.
Another nitpick would be, that I haven't seen anything like a score until now, like in many other arcade games. You get a rating after each level, that determines how many points you can spend on upgrdaes, but it does look like you won't be playing it for highscroes, which smeels like wasted potential, cause you can hit and juggle dead enemies, so the potential for wrapping up combos and scores would be there.
There are also rather long interruptions (30s-1min) between levels, where the game is autosaving (can't be turned off) and where you're getting a brief intruduction for the next level, in form of a little text dialogue. It bothers me, that the game is loading the level, after you've clicked through all the text, would it be that hard to load the level data in the background, while you're reading the text snippets?
The fact that you have to start over levels from scratch when you die, is a bit problematic too, cause many of the levels are relatively long, with sub-bosses and such. You can't blast through them either, cause bralwer-like you have to kill all enemies on-screen before you can proceed.
Although not a fault of the game itself, the absence of a 60Hz option in my PAL version, makes me a little sad (at least it's full screen).
But all in all, while this may sound negative, these are all relatively minor quibbles in contrast to the sheer fun and excitment I had with this game. It's one of the best action titles a played in a while and for its budget price, I can't recommened it high enough.
I'm so eager to try out the other characters and the two player mode, so there's lots of replay value, despite the length of the game.
I'd agree with 1ups 8 out of 10 review.
Too bad that it took them so long to get this baby out.
It's pretty good, it just... feels like a game that should have been out two years ago at least. The graphics are noticeably low-poly, the effects aren't that great, the music's pretty lo-fi, no speech, annoying loading pauses - and yes, the way the game's laid out smacks of either a rushed job or antiquated thinking. No checkpoints. Difficulty spikes. It saves after you make your choices levelling up, not before (so it's quite possible to **** yourself over and then either have to struggle on with bad choices or restart the game all over again).
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