REMOTE LIFE

I know this game was like a single person passion project, but geez... it's not the worst shmup I've played but it's far from good unless you're looking for a very, VERY specific feel. Graphically it's pretty good. Probably better than a lot of shmups rendered into 2d from 3d. Kinda reminds me of the weird industrial rendered 2d stuff of the 90s. Movement is pretty smooth, light effects decent. But the game is marred by a LOT of weird oversights and UI issues. First, visually, no explosion or pop when you blast meteors to clear your path, and this happens enough early on to be noticeable. They just disappear. This is with graphic effects on High, so ... no idea what this is about. Several sound effects clearly not leveled correctly. Some kind of siren enemy sound goes off in stage 2 that's just way louder than anything else going on. Music is generic electro rave weirdness, and doesn't fit the vibe, also looping poorly. Terrible voice acting and writing overall. But hey, shmups are like that sometimes. Touhou looks like crap but plays great. This game, though... it doesn't play very well. It's painfully slow. You get weapons by the dozen from icons floating around, each one having limited ammo. Of the three levels I've tolerated you're kind of cruising forward and dodging through lazily placed gates, floating spiky things, and shooting whatever stupid thing is sitting on the wall for a couple minutes at a time. No sense of power, only difficult thing is you start with the slow ship and have to unlock faster ships that have no other ability besides being faster. Weapons are varied but in the "more is less" kind of way. You have these things thrown at you every five seconds and rarely have a good reason to use any of them. Your basic weapons are good enough to deal with most things and when they aren't, a type C weapon "Cavatious Gun" or something just blows up the entire screen in a couple seconds. And, just to stab you in the neck, there's escort missions. As for the UI issues... change your ship after a mission and you're locked in that space. Only way to get out is press Escape or start the mission. It's a whole other screen and feels weird. Tell the game from the main menu to quit the game and you have to go through a whole confirmation screen to get out, but press escape during the game and you're dumped back to the main menu without warning. Can't just press escape to get out of the game, but have to physically move the cursor over the Quit to get to the quit screen. Throw money at this if you want. Like I said, passion project and all that... and if there was more work going into this game trying to refine it, I might be more kind, but it appears they're working on a sequel to this one with a lot of these pretty glaring issues front and center. I'm sure this will be up someone's alley, but in my opinion, it's like all those low budget twin stick shooters that came out on the XBLA days, no sense of pacing, just all flash and no soul.