Enemies die in little explosions and your bullets feel weedy.
R TYPE RESOGUN FULL
Even when the screen is full of bullets, it never feels exciting. If shoot ’em ups are going to keep things simple then they need to be either incredibly well-designed, incredibly dramatic in terms of the on-screen action or just aesthetically-pleasing and Boiling Bolt is none of these things. There’s no sense of progression here at all. Power-ups shouldn’t make you worse at things. The ‘Super Spread Shot’ weapon (which you’ll want because it shoots five bullets at a time and, unlike the default weapon, can actually be aimed in all directions) and the ‘Ultra Strength Module’ (which offers the best attacking power) can both be bought right away and given that all the modules decrease other stats, none of them are particularly desirable anyway. The problem is that the game gives you 250 crystals (the in-game currency) which is good enough to buy the most useful stuff right away. Unfortunately, this is where Boiling Bolt really drops the ball.Ī shop screen show allows you to buy modules that improve your strength (attack), defense and speed. This is where the game’s upgrading mechanics should come into play, and bear in mind I’ve just put dozens of hours into Sky Force Reloaded which is all about that kind of thing. You get two lives and three credits with which to get through the whole game and it soon becomes apparent that this may not be enough as Boiling Bolt can be pretty tricky. My first attempt at the game’s first section saw me awarded with a D rating, whereas a perfect run through with me not dying, not missing any enemies and keeping my score multiplier active got me a C. The boss battles break things up a little but can be initially a bit unfair as their attack patterns aren’t always immediately obvious.Įach section of the game gives you a rating. It’s nothing special but the game is fairly capable during these sections but it’s all pretty pedestrian too especially compared to some of the great shoot ’em ups we’ve had on PSN so far.
Once you’ve got the mechanics down, the game either has you heading right, shooting through popcorn enemies on your way to the big boss of each of the game’s five stages, or you’ll be trapped in small areas and forced to clear waves of enemies until the game decides to release you. Unfortunately, the limited play area and the weird screen warping sometimes make using it a bit of a leap of faith. The left trigger is mapped to a fairly useful dodge move that can get you out of trouble and will cause time to slow down if used effectively. Two of these offer the 360 degree aiming (albeit with less range), one gives you a clumsy black hole weapon and the last is a shield, these are mapped to the right trigger and have variable levels of usefulness but can come in handy, even if they can feel a little unnatural to use in heavy combat. It looks vaguely interesting but doesn’t help the gameplay at all. You’re still playing on a 2D plane but the space itself is unnecessarily warped. This part of the screen is almost like a track that you play along and you can move left or right (using the left stick) and you fire and aim with the right stick.Įnemies slide into the play area from the left or right and so shooting them should be as simple as being on the same height level as them and shooting, however this is complicated because of the weird stylistic decision to warp the track around in three dimensional space. Anything above or below that is off limits, like you’re playing a ZX Spectrum game that is trying to save a bit of processing power by only redrawing part of the screen. The first odd design choice is to limit the play area to a narrow strip that comprises of just over a third of the screen. As with that game you are in a little ship that can move left or right (although in Boiling Bolt you are generally heading to the right as opposed to looping around the level) and can shoot in either direction.
R TYPE RESOGUN PS4
It’s a little different to most of the twin-stick shooters that we review on here but the most obvious comparison can be made with Resogun, Housemarque’s peerless PS4 launch title. The game itself is a fairly ordinary twin-stick shooter and comes to us by way of French developers Persistant Studios. But, with that in mind, I’m pretty sure that I’d never make the sort of design decisions that Boiling Bolt makes, no matter how potentially bad I would be as a developer.
R TYPE RESOGUN HOW TO
Not only am I not a games developer but I’m pretty sure that if I devoted myself one hundred percent to learning how to make them, I wouldn’t be able to make something capable of being sold on PSN if you gave me an entire year off to learn the skills and another year to make a game. Decemin PS4 tagged arcade / boiling bolt / resogun / shoot em up / twin stick by Richie
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