Project Mercury

janky: adjective very bad in quality or condition: The elevator in the library is so janky. Her physical revealed what you might call a "janky elbow."

NOT RECOMMENDED. It is an endless, nonsensical obstacle course with the stiffest controls known to man and the most restrictive, time-based shooting restrictions possible. It means unless you rehearse and memorize every single frame of enemy encounters, you are going to lose. That is less fun than school. At least school has a limit and a meaning to it. This game thinks making every second into a maneuvering challenge that would be the most challenging moment in a GOOD GAME. Seeing that the game is about a couple levels long, it is an obvious case of difficulty padding. Also the controls are terrible. If the enemies are not either straight in front of you or above you, you ain't hitting them. The aiming system is mostly a good way to get killed while still not hitting anything. I do not think the game is properly tested. I did not found any way to avoid the dive attack of the second hornet swarm boss. Your jump is too low and weak to go properly over it. When your game is more difficult every second than 90 % of Ninja Gaiden 1, you are over-doing it. The concept of difficulty padding is awful - you are made to fight more to get less, because the content you would reasonably expect to get is replaced with the same dull difficulty. It is not difficult skill-wise. The overly long levels drag on with such repetitive enemy patterns that you lose focus fast. I recall the hornet level re-used the same patterns at least four times each, with just slight variations to mess you up and finish you off from being bored. Make content, not worthless difficulty padding. The moment you feel the need to pad out your game should be the clue for you to either cut the game length or make more content in between to avoid it becoming a boring slog. Ultimately the core gameplay and controls kill it. You are big and slow and have artificially limited firing speed while the enemies fill the screen and you cannot realistically avoid them the first time through. This game is a book report in a game form. Bleargh. I got it for free and it was still too expensive for what I got. AVOID.