Xbox Live Indie Game Review – You Will Die
This game is fucking cruel. It’s evil, and it’s quite possibly one of the hardest games in the Indie Games section. It doesn’t screw around. You have one weapon, one life, a shield that hacks away at your score (which is the ultimate point of the game) and no apologies. Most people I’ve seen who play this (including me. Hey, I never said I was good at these games) can’t get past about level 3 or 4. Out of, from what I understand, 32 total levels.
So it’s definitely appropriately titled. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you WILL eventually die.
That doesn’t mean it’s any good though, now does it. We’re going to have to make that determination as we go … well … more like I’ve already made my decision and you’ll just have to read on and see.
There are other games on the 360 Indie Games that market themselves as being bloody impossible. The atrocious “The Impossible Game” is one of them, offering nothing in regards to gameplay and fun. And there are definitely other shooters in the Indie Games section of this marvelous (if a bit mechanically unreliable) little system we call the Xbox 360. A couple of the better ones to have come out recently are Decimation X and Platypus. And are both awesome choices that you owe it to yourself to go out and get right now.
And to be perfectly honest, I initially ignored this game because it’s by the same developer who released “Revenge of the Ball” which was … and still is … shit. Really cool idea, good presentation (come on, how many times have you wondered just how pissed off those balls in Pong really get) just a crap game.
Graphically, the game isn’t anything spectacular, but it does it’s job and it does it well. All the shots are very easy to see, the frame rate keeps constant and the two ships and various weaponry are decently detailed. If the starfield in the background changes, you aren’t going to notice it too much because you’re going to be too busy dodging bullets. The sound is just awesome with kick ass music, bass thudding explosions and the typical sound of the shots being fired you would expect from an old school style shooter like this. Nothing wrong with the presentation here.
The gameplay is fairly simple. Even though it IS a twin stick shooter, the gameplay is more akin to games like Gradius and R-Type in the fact that it’s mostly a horizontal shooter. You do have a shield in the game, that, when active, depletes your score and multiplier. So it’s a give and take style situation … “Do I wanna live or do I wanna snag that high score.” But by about level 4 it starts really showing it’s difficulty, so the ramp up is REALLY quick. But the big draw for this game is, the game is fucking FUN. And you want to get back at that goddamn ship that’s been mocking you the whole time. Each time a level starts you get a little sound bite from the ship talking to you telling you that you don’t have a chance and other things. Which gets me, personally, real pissed and makes me want to shove everything I’ve got up it’s ass. Which doesn’t always work seeing as how I haven’t gotten past level 4. But I keep coming back to it because the bullet hell implementation is superbly done and paced just right. It seems impossible at first to get past these levels, but you start (in my case) slowly seeing the patterns arise.
8.0 – The game is exactly what I said. Balls hard, and just evil. I don’t even know if I’ll ever make it further in this game just because of that. This and Decimation X complement each other perfectly in my eyes and are definitely worth getting. 80 points is a small price to pay to be humbled like this and still have a blast.
There are people on the leaderboards who have reached level 18 as of this writing, and maybe one of them can leave a comment on the later half of the game for me sometime if they see this. :)
Possibly related posts: