Icarus-X: Tides of Fire

Ok i usually don't spit on games i buy but this one can't stay untouched. Everything from the control to art is terrible. The sound will make your ears bleed to death, the controls are approximative at best. I never really care about art or graphic quality but when it does hide the bullets or the enemies there's a problem. A really bad mobile game that should have stay rotting on his garbage support.

Pretty fun little scrolling bullet hell. Has some interesting additions to customizing your ship and gameplay. You have RPG aspects to upgrade your skills, you get boosts to stats with skill points, and it has a complete weapon and accessory system like an RPG with the colored levels and whatnot. Special skills, secondary weapons, XP and tech pickups, and quite a few non-upgradable stats that are boosted by the equipment you find and buy. (shield regen, crit. %, pickup distance, etc.). You pick up weapon parts, shields, and modules to give yourself different stats and it is kind of randomized like a Diablo/Borderlands as it says on the store page. It's defintiely NOT an adventure RPG game, its a SHMUP, but it has that style of item value so there isn't much other way to describe it. White, green, blue, purple...yadda yadda. xD Music and the backgrounds aren't great. You can dim the backgrounds though so it makes it a lot easier to see enemies and stuff through bullets and the background graphics. Sounds, music, and backgrounds make it feel Indie and it does make the presentation feel a little less than amazing. Options to force V-sync, change resolution, and a few other video options like changing to windowed and landscape. Audio is standard volume so you can shut the music off if you want. I think that the gameplay and mechanics are solid enough to recommend this, however. Watch the store video if this is a major issue for you. It also has the option to turn on auto-fire so your main weapon fires constantly. This is actually pretty much what I use because you wouldn't stop firing in this game regardless. No reason to bother turning it off imo. You also have a speed up button to skirt out of tight spots much faster. It's not a AAA made SHMUP by any stretch, but defintiely has a lot of great qualities that aren't common in this genre. Getting it from a bundle I am pleasantly surprised, and the low price isn't something I'd cry about if I had bought it either. The gamepad controls are OK, but not great until you rebind them. Initially, before you are able to rebind them they feel very awkward trying to move around the menus (they actually do work in the menus, but may not seem like it the way they are bound). They do become easier to use once you figure out how to bind them and that the cursor is being moved by the left stick, or D-Pad. Trigger buttons, are not available to bind, at least on my PS3 gamepad using 360 emulation, but the shoulder buttons work fine. There aren't enough controls to worry about this, however. Unless you turn off auto-fire the only other in-game buttons you need are "Special" and "Speed Up/Boost" So you don't need the triggers anyways. Once you bind them everything works fine and you don't need to worry too much. You are dodging a TON bullets (bullet hell obviously) and picking up loot so not worrying about firing is nice. :P Fun scrolling arcade bullet hell that has Campaign, and arcade modes. Leaderboards, achievements, and trading cards. Presentation isn't amazing, but the mechanics and gameplay are fun and worthwhile. Has some difficulty spikes that might need some balancing, but I didn't have too many issues. Awesome emtoes too. :icarussmile:

Alright, this is rather interesting. Although the description references Diablo and Borderlands it is actually a very standard (length wise) 5 levels top-down shooter with Rpg mechanics mixed in. You level up, get some loot and allocate points in skill trees with the usual critical strike, armor, shield and such stats you would find in a typical Diablo-like. So while it's not the big adventure you might expect, there is some interesting theorycrafting to be made. Pros Super smooth framerate Good variety of loot and stats Weapons feel great You get a massive regenerating shield which is a relief when tons of bullets are fired your way Controls fine with a gamepad Pretty cool music Cons The backgrounds are really minimalist and repetitive Some bosses are op, some are jokes, could use some balancing Gamepad in menus controls the mouse cursor, might as well use the mouse? All in all I'd recommend it, just don't expect a full blown RPG but rather a small top-down shooter with Rpg mechanics.

Me nice music

Icarus-X has seen it fit to introduce that most traditional of gaming mechanics - The Grind. Even in scrolling shooters, a branching skills tree could perhaps be labelled uncommon if hardly new, but I've not seen many looting system within the genre. Games like Borderlands and Diablo are liberally name-dropped as comparison models, and not completely unfairly. Either by defeating enemies and picking up drops or purchasing from the in-game store, you can deck out up to four equipment slots including primary and secondary fire, as well as a core chip and a shield. It all works pretty well; though physically there’s not a huge amount of variation. For example, the primary fire is purely distinguished by the rate of spread, the more focused the collection of bullets, the more powerful they usually are. Secondary fire has a little more choice to it, offering homing missiles or a collection of lasers with a small variety of tricks ranging from vanilla constant beams to a circling weapon that rotates constantly around your craft. Things like armour rating, shield power, tech drop rates, critical hit percentage and power consumption are also tracked through your equipment making any alteration you go for more of a balance trade off rather than a straight swap. That new laser might be more powerful, but it does chip away and your shield regeneration rate and make your hitbox slightly bigger. Full Review // http://www.honestgamers.com/12600/pc/icarus-x-tides-of-fire/review.html

Nice graphics, nice music, nice shmup game. It's very difficult and quite addicting.

I'm generally bad at bullet-hell shmups but I like this game. Developer "Quadsphere" has made a casual mode for scrubs like me to practice on before I graduate to the three higher difficulties. What sets this game apart from your average schmup is the ability to collect tech as you play. Unlike your typical game which gives you a short boost, these upgrades are permanent and may be better than your existing shields, weapons, and missiles. If so, you can switch them out at the end of each level. If you're playing casual difficulty, you can also switch gear if you die before the level is finished. Any of your items can be sold for cash if desired and there is a cash shop available to purchase additional items. You accumulate experience points to level up and build the type of ship you want and can specialize in Attack/crit, defense/armor/resists, or tech/special weapons. For example, you can increase the damage of your weapons, increase your crit chance, add armor or increase the amount of tech you receive. If I could change one thing with the game, I would change the items in the shop every time you play whether you succeed or not. I'd also increase chance of seeing rare items a little more. The shop usually has only low quality weapons so I rarely use it. Plus the items in the shop do not change until you complete a level. This can be a problem if you're stuck on a tough level with weak equipment both on your ship and in the shop. Tip: You get a total of 30 skill points, so plan to spend at least 21 skill points in your preferred play-style to benefit from the last and often best skill.

When I first booted this up and I saw the auto-fire kick on, I figured this shmup wouldn't keep my attention long, but I've been pleasantly surprised. Some elegant RPG progression elements needed to advanced past challenging (but not impossible shmup-like) levels has kept me coming back for more. A decent varity of common and boss enemies, weapons, shields and powers gives this little game a good amount of depth. Recommended!

It's got a fine base bullet hell gameplay loop (although sometimes some bullets can be hard to see), and the creator has at least a better than average understanding of what makes a loot system interesting, at least in terms of managing to have some meaningful enchantments on occasion. However, there's just not enough content for a complete game: the enemy patterns and bosses are reused excessively between levels, in a game that already has you repeating levels for more treasure; and the loot system just plain doesn't have enough different item types to collect, so it loses its charm long before the campaign reaches its end.

The best so far of the vertical shooter genre.