I first discovered this game's existence on the biggest Polish fantasy & games convention, Pyrkon. I was impressed by what I first saw; the demo, while very short, was fun to play and the developer seemed very passionate about his product. Little did I know back then, the demo contained pretty much everything the full game has to offer in terms of fun.
Too Angry to Space is a tongue-in-cheek side-scrolling platformer-shooter, not unlike a plethora of niche games that came out on PC at the dawn of the century. The story is obviously purposely silly and barely existent, and the main character has a ridiculous slavic accent, spewing out unnecessarily vulgar one-liners (you can actually turn on a parental mode, which you don't see often in this kind of games I guess). Now, the story and setting I really don't mind, five minutes into the game and you never give it another thought. But Red Madson, the main character, is not only unfunny, but plain annoying. Once I heard a few circulations of about 10-15 lines, I up and muted the whole game. The sound makes no difference in clarity here, anyway.
We'll get back to sound in a moment, but first, the gameplay. Did you miss the unmemorable, grey, purposelessly gritty sci-fi themed 2D platformers from 20 years ago? No? Because Too Angry to Space harkens back to just that. It's one thing if you build your product on nostalgia for something actually good, but this one build upon the stuff you'd get for free on a CD attached to a gaming magazine because this was the only way you'd ever be willing to give it a shot. Now, you may notice, I actually went ahead and 100%ed the whole game. I did so to prove a point. The game's difficulty in jumping, shooting, finding Doom-like keycards, hitting switches and collecting stuff is incredibly artificial, and more often than not deaths are cheap as heck. Both the hard and ultra modes are barely any bigger challenge than the basic playthrough - one pits you against a few more enemies, the other starts you off with a plethora of ammo for all weapons that you need to conserve wisely, as all ammo pickups are worth just one shot... Which would be something, except the basic pistol has unlimited ammo and is almost as good as any other weapon, especially in anger mode.
Anger mode, then, is your run of the mill berserk. Shoot stuff, pick up dogtags, and for a few seconds you run faster and shoot more bullets with each shot. That's all of it, really. Combined with the fact the whole game has a total of five types of enemies, three bosses, and all four guns just fire horizontally forward, the novelty wears off after like five levels from the fourteen it consists of. Tanks drive left to right and shoot, mechs do exactly the same but are taller so you can duck their shots, green aliens are too flat to be hit on the same level with anything that's not the shotgun, ugly-eye aliens follow you lazily and mines are just mines. Most often, you'll die not from the enemies' shots, but by running or falling accidentally into them, since there's no invincibility frames so if you're touching something that hurts, your health goes down in less than a second. Incredibly frustrating and unfair. Oh, and the bosses are laughable. First two are just based on the pattern of getting out of their way as they walk left and right, then pummeling their behinds. The third and last one is supposed to be harder by regenerating its health constantly, but then you notice the machine gun, first weapon you find in the entire game, has the highest DPS so you just stand on the platform with ammo and take the boss' health down faster than it can take down yours.
Graphics are mediocre at best. The artist has a decent comic book style, which shines most in the intro and outro comics, and the main character looks okay. Enemies however, are extremely basic, and colored in a way that often blends with the background, because everything is just grey, brown or bluish. Levels are made of two tilesets that toggle from one to another each level, and mostly differ through coloration. Any visual effects are the most basic stuff you can achieve in Unity. All of this looks acceptable on its own, but gets boring very quickly and combines into a mess.
Now, back to sound... I was willing to say the music and sound effects (apart from Red Madson's voice lines) were the strongest part of Too Angry to Space, but I can't say that it's a good thing. Why? Because as soon as you watch the credits, you'll notice that all of it is Creative Commons stock material! Seriously! Add to the fact you're greeted with a Unity Personal Edition screen every time you launch the game, it suddenly dawns on you - what the hell did I pay for? The developer clearly didn't invest anything into his work! So why should anyone else? A game like this should be released on a gamedev board for free, get some feedback, and maybe begin something serious from there. I can't believe someone greenlighted a product so obviously half-assed.
In conclusion... Well, I did say I 100%ed the game. No challenge, sure, but I did spend my time on it, so Too Angry to Space can't be the absolute worst, and maybe 20 years ago I'd consider it okay... But in a world of so many games to choose from, this isn't worth your interest, not even if you're from Poland and want to support the local devs. Support someone that actually puts real effort into their work.
