Critical Annihilation

Fun game with huge potential, sadly abandoned by the dev :(

Dope music, enjoyable gameplay, cool graphics. Worth the price of free.

[h1] [/h1]

A fun twin-stick shooter with satisfyingly punchy weapons, deployable turrets, and shields. Featuring an upgrade system for slightly buffing your character's stats, and perks to increase XP gain or change up gameplay. Sometimes in fairly imaginative ways, like returning bullets that hit an enemy to your magazine, or increasing experience gain by 10% each time your shot connects, resetting this cumulative bonus when you miss. Which sounds a bit feast or famine, but can be worked in your favor by stacking some carefully-placed shots, then dropping turrets and/or switching to explosives until you run out. The default game mode is mission-based, rather than endless, so it can be played in bite-sized chunks. Visuals and effects are good, and even a busy screen full of enemies are not lost in the clutter, so it's possible to think tactically about the order in which to eliminate threats. I would like to have a laser sight on the weapons, as a controller user. When aiming with the mouse, the cursor shows the point of aim, so a laser sight would help bring some parity between the control schemes. But the tracers already show point of impact rather well. (Edit: Turns out the laser sight is an upgrade, which I unlocked later, and improves accuracy of the weapon to boot, so it's not just cosmetic) Strongly recommended. AND it's free!

This might be the most fun game I'd ever played, and I don't like video games (Even tho I have over a hundred games in my library while in the making of this review), so that's saying something. First time I played this game was on itch, found it to be pretty fun but still in development with only 2 levels. It was probably around 2020 at the time. Replayed this game again when I found it on Steam and it surprised me on how much it grown. This game is great for casual players, the levels can be challenging but can be easily beaten with a few strategies. Sadly it doesn't have multiplayer, I really hope the Devs will and them. The most fun part is probably going to be the amount of destruction you can do while fighting those enemies. More like aliens tbh. This game is definitely a 9.5/10, gave it 0.5 points less because there are some bugs that makes it kind of annoying and also the fact that I don't really care about games. Final Score: 9.5/10 Pros: Game Cons: Few bugs - (Just annoying)

[b] Review Summary: Game mechanics are unrewarding and game design is repetitive, also its FREE! [/b] It may be free but the level up system gives you 2 stat ups and either an passive or active ability but the stat ups feel like you grew 1 millimeter in height. Power ups literally just activate an active ability without a cooldown, The level design has you go through the same level 3 times for an hour all the while listening to the same music loop for that entire duration.

Good potential - pity the developer could no longer work on the game, so much could have been done with CA if only he had the resources or time.