Blasters of the Universe

HAIL ALWYN THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE ASS-HWOOPER.

I picked this up hoping that it would be superior to, or at least on par with, Space Pirate Trainer, whose repetitive arcade mode is what I'm trying to find more variations of. I was really off and feel misled by the reviews. Let me tell you exactly why. Pros:[olist][*]The customized weapon that you hold is really cool. It's interesting how your choices of the type of receiver, barrel, ammo, and magazine affect even how you reload the firearm itself. [*]It has endless modes for its levels and appears to have dynamic high-score challenges on at least a weekly basis, if not daily. [*]It has left-handed mode! [*]Unlike SPT, it has an interesting plot with a character who has character. 🥁[/olist] Now for the cons:[olist][*]While there is a "Profanity" filter in the options, there is no check for this upon launch (there is already profanity in the opening video), and even when it's activated, "@$$" somehow isn't reduced to "butt" nor bleeped out. [*]There are way more projectiles to dodge—they're slower, but many more of them regularly come from horizontally off-screen, which makes them way more frustrating to deal with. The enemies far more frequently (I'd say twice as much) move to positions outside of your vision, requiring you to check left & right constantly, which got too cumbersome to put up with. [*]The enemies aren't interactive: you can't interrupt any enemies' attack nor movement patterns like you can in SPT with the standard drones' charging, nor are BotU's enemies pushed around by your shots at all. Many SPT drones experience impact force which is really cool to see. [*]The majority of the enemies you encounter (at least in the first zone, which was all I played) have no coordination with each other and just independently pick spots to move to to fire at you from, as opposed to the tightly coordinated swarms of awesome SPT drones. [*]The enemies' weapons don't appear to have muzzle flashes and aren't as exciting to watch as SPT drones. [*]Your firearm's starting two types of projectiles aren't influenced by gravity at all, but they travel slowly, like the enemies. This is more of a pain and less interesting to bother mastering than fast-moving projectiles that arc down with gravity. [*]The controls are described in a strange manner that doesn't seem to care to recognize most modern Oculus/Meta controllers; it says to press down on the "touchpad," which the Quest 2 doesn't have. [*]You can't customize any controls; sure, you can't do this in SPT, either, but it's awkward to have to press your recessive hand's controller's joystick button down to pull out a magazine to reload your firearm, when that joystick itself isn't used at all otherwise, [i]and there is an unused button that would be perfect for the magazine![/i] So why require the awkward press of the joystick button? The controls are just suboptimal, at least for the Quest 2. [*]There is at least one fully automatic weapon that has two states of firing: [list][*]Tap to let the game auto-fire until the mag is empty[*]Hold to keep firing until you let go to stop, which allows you to not use up the magazine [/list]The weird thing is that if you tap to start shooting, you CANNOT stop firing until the magazine is depleted. It doesn't work as a toggle, even though one would think that it should. This is a massive problem if you meant to hold down the trigger but accidentally tapped it, and your magazine is a snail-slow, self-recharging variant.[/olist] Yeah, I couldn't handle all of the defects in the game. The opening cutscene is pretty entertaining, though, but that and the gun-building workshop (ironically, more than actually [i]using[/i] what you assembled) were probably the most memorable parts of the game. [b]EDIT:[/b] I forgot to say that it gave me the "Don't move!" Stun 1,000 enemies achievement, which apparently <4% of all players have (at the time of this review), and, well, I've clearly played it for < half an hour, so there is some sort of achievement glitch. It also gave me Reflect Ray and I can only guess whether I reflected a shielded shot back into an enemy's head amid all of the chaos, but my achievements will be removed with my refund, so whatever.