TLDR: A twin-stick shooter with satisfying gameplay and fantastic soundtrack. Devs understand how to make a good arcade game with high difficulty and no bs concentrated intense gaming. Achievements encourage you to learn the game and face harder challenges: felt very rewarding completing 100%. Totally worth it playing!
An arcade game the way it should be: no time to explain – grab the gun and shoot the enemies. Clear visuals: everything is distinct and easy to parse. Controls are responsive and fluid – feels satisfying to move and shoot. However, you can’t reassign buttons and are forced to play with predetermined scheme. Playing with keyboard is probably not the best idea – the binds are quite unintuitive, so I played with a controller, and, although I probably would change a few buttons, it was no problem. As for music and sound, their volume is a binary switch: I would certainly like a slider. Good thing is - they are awesome! There are not many game osts which I would listen away from the game itself, but this is absolutely such a case. Sounds are juicy and the announcer approaches “heavy machinegun” levels – pure bliss.
Jumping doesn’t give you i-frames, so it’s used for movement and reposition purposes. However you can damage certain enemies while rolling at them. It’s dangerous, but provides opportunities for skill play. Another aspect of combat is melee: it’s rather risky, but once you learn to use it, it feels rewarding and sometimes gives you an advantage. Most weapon pickups are either a huge straight-up power boost, or might be a bit finicky but very potent in certain spots, however it seems like homing is almost always a downgrade – it could definitely use a buff.
Dog tags are a pickup used to make purchases in the shop. It doesn’t introduce power imbalance, however I’m not sure it’s really needed. You can generally upgrade important stats like dmg, hp and speed pretty quickly. For example, already after level 1 you can get your damage to max. It kinda works, as there are no meta upgrades and everything is contained within one run, however after about level 5 (of 7) there is no point in picking up dogtags: you’ll be maxed out on upgrades, which looks like a design flaw – there is no other way to utilize currency. You could buy continue pills, but we don’t talk about those here ;) So the shop system isn’t a detriment, but could be more deep and nuanced.
Each level consists of a chain of rooms: once you enter, you are locked inside until all aliens are cleared. Enemies do not pile up: if you stop killing, new ones won’t spawn. This prevents frustrating experiences, when falling behind might snowball you into a very bad situation, however I wonder if enemy cap could be significantly increased on a hard difficulty setting. Your base gun has finite ammo, however, once you run out, a pickup will appear, which tops it up: this gives incentives not to shoot all the time. There is basically no backtracking: in some levels you have to move to a side room to get a key to progress, but it doesn’t waste your time.
The game is really challenging in a good way: it’s not purposefully unfair or impossible even for a not so skilled player like me, but challenging enough that you can’t beat it by chance. It took me 23,5 hours to beat the game on base difficulty and it felt very rewarding. Even the way they name it “easy” pokes you and incentivizes to push further. So, naturally I went for a hard mode. Enemy hp remain the same, but they move faster and projectile speed increases, so it makes it more challenging without turning enemies into bullet sponges. For my taste, they could make it a bit harder in some aspects: like higher enemy cap, more shooting enemies, but it’s still challenging as is. At a 36,5h mark I managed to beat hard mode.
Achievements push you to take on harder challenges, while not forcing to engage in unfun gameplay patterns. For example, getting 200 dogtags means you can spend very little in shop, so it’s akin to low% run. Usually not a fan of coop achievements, but you can easily do it solo. When doing S-grades on individual levels, you can get hit no more than once – I appreciate that you have a small amount of leeway here: it’s still hard, but the devs meet you halfway. Well, more like 5%-way:) To do it in a sane way, you need to level select – you get the code after beating the game. I almost gave up on getting S in HQ until I learned that you can fight the boss if you access it from backers menu (not the cheat menu) Last level is brutal, even on easy when you go for S-grade. Took me 61,5h to complete all the achievements and the journey felt amazing.
Scoring: I’m just a normie-survival player, but I’ll try to elaborate nevertheless. First, there are no leaderboards. To compare and compete against other players is the whole point! They did consider a few things for the scoring system though: additional points for picking hp and grenades when maxed out, which gives incentives to not get hit and not use powerful grenades. The presence of optional rooms in some levels provides additional opportunities to increase your score, but bears risks, which is a proper dynamics. Melee gives double the points too. As far as I know, you can’t milk for points. So, there is foundation, but devs didn’t lead idea to its conclusion. Simply adding scoring “because arcade game” is not very thoughtful: ideally scoring system is integrated within the game process itself and gives it depth. Even in sonic every 50k would give you 1 life, so it was vaguely connected to gameplay and you would get big bonuses for finishing level fast - nothing of the sort here. At the end of a game, which usually takes 35-40 min to beat, you are shown your time, rank and kills. Seeing how you are always evaluated on your performance via a rank system, I would like more though and transparency put into it. For example, why not include a menu section, which shows requirements for each rank as well as how you can score more points. You could also get big bonuses for, let’s say flawless level, more point for not using bombs at the end of a level etc. That’s a loss of good opportunity to enrich the game.
You can select between two characters but the difference is purely cosmetic. I’d enjoy having meaningfully different chars, but it’s fine.
Boss fights provide a change of pace each with unique soundtrack and mechanics; however they are way too easy. Also, very minor changes between easy and hard mode: don’t like it - I think they should be scaled way more for hard difficulty: more hp and certainly more aggression, bullets and new attack patterns. There is boss rush, which was helpful in practicing against final boss.
There is a survival mode with non-stop action without transitioning to rooms – this is a fun way to practice and challenge yourself. The shop upgrades work as pickups here, so there is variance in the order and types of powerups you get. Personally, I didn’t get to 2500 kills, even though I got an achievement for doing so. I think the way the game treats it is incorrect: you don’t have to get the kills during a single run, but rather it adds your results during a single game session. That’s what happened to me: I jammed several runs one by one, getting 800-1000 kills and then suddenly 2500 kills cheevo popped. Although I’ve gotten pretty close one time – to 2470 and choked at the very end :) Getting there is not trivial as rng, especially getting a rare full heal, is often the difference. Still a fun mode.
The game is an easy recommend, despite its minor shortcomings, even if you don’t want to attempt all the achievements: simply beating it once is worth it - gameplay is involved and the music is fire. Xeno Crisis is hard, credit feed is discouraged and so seeing your improvements feels very fulfilling. I’m glad that games like that are still being made nowadays. Mission all over!
