Viral Reload EX

This game is fun and challenging. It'll kick in that "Just one more run" mentality very quickly. You can tell the devs knew what they wanted when they made this game. It's a wave-style shoot-em-up with nicely polished 2D sprite work and stylistically crude, rudimentary 3D graphics that reminds me of arcade games from 1992. The chiptunes music is actually really catchy. There's even a "Winners Wash Their Hands" message that mocks the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" message that every Arcade from the early 90s loved to display. The story is totally cheeseball fun. The bassist of the most popular music band in the world suddenly turns evil and wants to use his alien viruses to take over the world. It's up to Bimmy (not Billy- nice Double Dragon reference there) and Octo to put a stop to him and save their friends and the other band members in the process. Gameplay is simple. 3 lives, no health bar, no power ups, no smart bombs, no shields. If you get killed, you start over the particular wave (or boss) from the very start. However, it's within that simplicity where the challenge lays. X to shoot, A to Dash (which allows you to wipe out bullets in the process.) Bimmy shoots forward at enemies, while Octo trades focused fire to shoot homing missiles instead. Enemy AI isn't complicated. Some shoot lasers at you, some hurl themselves at your position before returning in place, some fire in basic shot patterns. All of them can be cheesed in some fashion by exploiting the edges of the screen, but you're still going to find yourself getting caught by a stray bullet now and then. The Bosses are where the challenge really gets you. The Brain boss at Wave 30 is actually more difficult to defeat than the boss that comes after it. The bosses are definitely challenging, borderline frustrating, and in some cases a bit unfair to the player. I think some minor bit of tweaking on behalf of the dev team can remove that last detail. There's some nice bells and whistles found in the option menu, for retro gamers who really want that old-school 90s feel, including settings to adjust for flipped monitor set-ups. Is the game perfect and GOTY material? No, but I don't think the devs were going for perfect. It's well polished, fun to play, only costs $10, and is only 58 megabytes! THIS IS A TINY GAME for your computer's storage. Even the most potato of PCs can play this without issue. You'll put in more than enough time to get your money's worth.

Well-polished wave-based shmup. Difficulty is pretty high until you get a handle on the game but there are training/practice modes for the stages and bosses which are very useful. The cutscenes are well done and gave me a genuine chuckle occasionally which is rare :) The game is criminally cheap too, so no reason not pick it up if you enjoy the demo.

The game has two main aspects to the gameplay: 1- The Dash: You have a side dash that grants you invincibility frames, and recharges almost immediately. You have a brief window after using it where you're vulnerable an can't use it again, so over using it will eventually a zip directly into enemy bullets. 2- Enemy Wave-based Short Encounters: Unlike other shmups, this game does not try to create a bullet pattern, but rather, it has enemies that shoot / behave in different ways, and each short wave sets up an enemy pattern for you to manage. In each stage, you must defeat 9 waves of enemies and the boss at the end. Dying once resets the wave / boss, dying 3 times resets the stage. It takes some getting used to with the dash. You don't want to over rely on it, but you also don't want to forget about it. some waves you can manage to just avoid the bullets, some enemies demand the use of the dash. I found myself switching between "Dashing mode", and "Avoidance mode" until I slowly incorporated the dash into normal play. The game often makes you select between two characters, the human and the octopus. The human has more firing power, while the octopus has homing projectiles. I gravitated more towards the human because I can be more deliberate in destroying the enemies quickly before things get out of hand, and it helps me focus more during gameplay. The pixel art is very low-res, and the game started with a strong screen shake. I nearly got a headache the first few minutes of play, but thankfully, you can reduce the screen shake, and I got used to the presentation. Overall, it's a fun and a tad difficult game.

hey that's pretty good

[b]Impressions from the first 3 levels:[/b] The demo save carries over to the main game (a lovely touch), so give the demo a try. It's easy to pick up - just two buttons: one for firing and one for dashing. The dash is a short-distance slide/teleport, really well done - it wipes out any bullets you touch mid-dash. The button mapping is excellent: X for shooting, A for dashing. You never have to move your thumb off the fire button - just roll it down to press A while still holding X. It reminds me of Ikaruga on the GameCube controller, where you fired with B and could roll your thumb onto A to switch polarity without ever letting go of fire. The gameplay choices are clearly designed to eliminate frustration. For example, destroying an enemy also wipes out its floating bullets, which makes for a very friendly, frustration-free experience. The story is light-hearted with easy, breezy language - no dense text - and it feels like a fun comic strip. On restarting, there's a toggle to always skip cutscenes you've already seen, and every cutscene can be skipped with a long press. The design decisions feel deliberate and meticulous, all aimed at reducing frustration - the mark of a well-thought-out game. It also runs natively on Linux / SteamOS (a huge plus) - one more sign of a forward-thinking, well-thought-out game.