Sniper Assassin: Shoot to Kill - iPhone

Starts off well, goes down hill quickly.

Through casually looking at and checking over the apps within the store, I happened upon this little game, which I thought I'd give a try. Thinking it'd be something along the lines of Sniper Scope on the arcades or one of those pseudo-Duck Hunt games harkening back to the days of the NES, or perhaps a reimagining of an original game along the lines of Operation Wow (a.k.a, let's cartoonise Operation Wolf). Instead I got something a little more impressive and a little cynical on the whole social commentary.

The BEST rifle, for more cash than a AAA game title these days...

The plot, you're a sniper and you're given contracts from city to city that you need to fulfil. These contracts tend to be specific to an area and more often than not, will require you to take aim into the city and shoot someone. Sometimes the mission will require you to shoot down several targets, or blow up a helicopter and such.

The detail and levelling aspect brings something novel to the game, boredom.

The layout of each mission takes place within a 3D modelled city and your location can be from alleyways to rooftops and usually a long way away from the action. Using your phone, you turn and tilt the phone until you're aiming at what you want, using the slider on the left you can use the zoom function but this takes you off aim for a moment while you do it (unless very careful) and tapping the screen anywhere will take the shot. A final shot/successful shot will be mapped out in a rather impressive bullet time akin almost to the Sniper Elite games, minus the skeleton structure showing. Head shots score more points than other shots and taking too long on a mission will inevitably fail it (or missing if it's a hostage mission).

Ingame cash, for outgame cash, to upgrade a gun to shoot things. This is apparently "fun".

However, each mission requires Energy, Energy that refills over time, or can be purchased. Here's where the nasty little monster of Pay to Keep Playing comes in. On top of this, to really push the money front out, each mission has prerequisites in the form of Accuracy, Zoom, Power and Stability which can all be upgraded for your particular weapon. You can use the money you earn from missions to upgrade the weapons or take one-off missions to add further supplement of funds, but these cost Energy. Or buy more coins.

You too can BUY this GUN! For more money than a real gun costs...

Yep, now we're getting bogged down in the gameplay. Later missions and special missions will require the use of more energy and some of the missions will be increasingly awkward to complete. Such as suicide bombers that MUST be taken out with a head shot. Phone bombers that won't be identified until they pull out a mobile phone. Other maps will set you up to fail and not until you fail the mission that the "helpful" guide will tell you what trap you just fell into.

So many missions, but you'll run out of energy way before you do anything.

The game is fully geared up for the long haul of burning your cash away. New weapons cost a fortune by comparison and later upgrades take additional time to be "delivered" while the option to spend a specific in-game currency is dropped in too! The gameplay is interesting to the point that some missions require some observation, thinking, planning, taking into account bullet drop over distance and then again, there's the money issue that royally takes lets the game shove you over a barrel so it can be ram overpriced costs up your arse sideways while laughing at your feeble attempts to pay up. 

Whoo, it's like The Matrix all over again.

Or, just don't pay and play every day or so. Sadly, this game effectively forces casual play as a difficulty spike, a nice idea but very poorly executed for the sake of pay-to-play functions.

Gigawing - Arcade, Dreamcast

If it moves, shoot it, meh, shoot it anyway.

Also released upon the Dreamcast, Gigawing is definitely one of those Bullet-Hell vertical shooter spaceship games. While I have reviewed several in this series of ABC Arcades, it's something to behold and a very special game in that it's just so over the top and overblown with crazy and madness.

LOOKOUT! There's a hint of plot here.

Let's start with the basics. Gigawing has the lovely shooty button. It lets you shoot the bullets and beams at the naughty things trying to end your game prematurely. Tapping the shooty button lets you fire repeatedly and constantly, however, if you hold the button down, you activate a psychokinetic shield capable of reversing the polarity of all energy-based projectiles, inversing angle, acceleration and force to send the aforementioned projectile on an inverse trajectory towards the point of origin, causing impact and sustained structural damage to the recipient whilst spawning a collectible icon that increases and amplifies the point-based reward system implemented by the game. Or, it sends bullets back to enemies and turns into bonus points.

Score rating: Stupid. Soon to become, CRAZY AND DUMB!

You also get a wealth of bombs with Gigawing which regenerate upon death and can be picked up, these bombs (along with using the shield in the aforementioned paragraph) cause a huge level of damage to everything as well as a focused attack in the centre of the screen upon bigger enemies/bosses. This combination of bombs and regenerating shields, can help you survive most of the game with very little time actually spent on surviving the bullet hell parts of the levels. Until you run out of bombs.

Use your reflection shield to turn their bullets into your bullets. Try not to get confused.

Gigawing has the lovely choice of four different crafts and pilots. Each one with their own story and style of attack. What becomes more interesting is that the planes and characters will interact with each other to form new storylines depending on who plays as which character and whether you're doing well or not. Each character has their own reasons for getting involved, be it the loss of a loved one, protecting others or just for shits and giggles. Perhaps not the best reason but it's one I can happily subscribe to.

Between me and the boss, not sure who's firing more shots here.

The first 3 levels are determined by the character choice but levels 4-6 (and maybe 7 if you're good) are always in their respective orders. The display and visual aesthetics behind the levels are stunning. Bullets tend to come in blue and pink fluorescence while MOST gold coloured things are points (careful later on), the appearance and background of everything in levels is staggering. Regrettably you'll never see it thanks to the chaos going on within the level itself. It's really manic and if you manage to get a breather you can view some of the most intricate and detailed designs to grace a game, but as said already, it's a shame you'll only see it if you're dead.

The returning boss, and maybe the super last boss if you're good at this game.

Enemies are quite varied in Gigawing, ranging from spaceships to submarines, to medallion embued bosses and almost everything can spunk out a cloud of bullets and attacks that you can almost instantly return back to them but you will see times where EVERYTHING on the screen is a bullet of sorts and bosses are certainly no exception to this rule. Bosses, in truth, go one step further and seem to not only spam bullets left and right but also in curiously interesting patterns that leaves me wondering upon the mathematic formulae to create such patterns, while I'm trying to blow them up.

Because shooting everything needs context...

The music in Gigawing fits perfectly. Lead and Synths for industrial levels, serene and calm tones for the more picturesque levels, suitably manic mid-boss fight music and boss music that makes you wake up and take note "HERE'S A BOSS!" with a clash of synths worth of any video-game gladiator entering the ring for combat. Assuming the gladiator runs straight in for a kill rather than pontificating about the arena declaring their worth and self-value or just being a dick in general.

This thing will throw more bullets at you than you've seen so far in the entire game.

Overall, it's fun quick game that doesn't get too painful too quickly and with the incredibly ridiculous scoring system, won't cause too much of an issue in the fact that it's bright, colourful and fast paced on the action (so fast in some cases it suffers slow-down on account of how MUCH is going on in the game) but it's still worth while viewing or grabbing it on the Dreamcast.

Hades Nebula

Once again, I take another look back to the older days, the days before Xbox 360s and PS3's (Yeah I know Xbox ONE and PS4 but honestly, not really giving a fuck there about the new stuff until it's made AFFORDABLE, I do not consider consoles costing over several hundred pounds to be worth my money, especially when other consoles still offer great games that are enjoyable, you know what, bollocks, I'm getting the Commodore 64 out again.)

Right, starting over, C64 time and a look at one of the first bullet-hell space shooters that I can remember from my childhood. Hades Nebula, apparently there's some sort of plot but given I only had the cassette (If you have to look up what that is, you're too young for this), and no manual. But that never stopped a kid from enjoying a game... unless it was Elite or Valhalla, then you had a few things to look up.

Oh and don't forget young 'un's, no international computer system was readily available for people to use until 1994, so no way to look up guides unless a) you bought one or b) you read one in a magazine. This game arrived on the gaming scene in 1987 and so you're a long way from home and the internet. Enjoy your cold, disconnected, solo experiences. (Unless of course you like that, in which case, just enjoy!).

Hades Nebula is your vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, featuring a rather plucky little one-hit-wonder spaceship, piloted by captain OnlyShootsForwards (Maiden name...), who of course is the very last defence against the giant ass-hat that is the Hades Emperor. Which always makes me wonder, why didn't they send Captain ShootyShip out first and have him wipe out most of the known enemy, as the player YOU'RE certainly more than capable of doing it.

Armed with a basic laser/bullet, you'll have to contend with veritable armadas of enemies, waves of opponents spawning and shooting at you while others will phase into existence and try to crash into your ship, or at the very least, prevent you from running backwards - which will kill you fairly quickly when you can't move out the way of new enemies coming in from the top of the screen. Before shooting the hell out of the occasional boss and then arriving at the biggest ship with the biggest number of guns and blasters etc, the much sought after, Final Boss.

Game play wise is very simple, the joystick moves the ship while the scrolling maintains a constant speed through levels, and enemies will spawn in at pre-determined places but in random spots. So just after the first level, you WILL fight your first wave of the skull-faced homing enemies but where they turn up on the screen, is randomly allocated within the code. As are all the waves of enemies, so each wave itself is specifically determined as to WHEN it turns up, just not WHERE on the screen. Randomisation does help replay-ability, ask any rogue-like dungeon player.

You do have some hope however, across the 15 levels and bosses, in the guise of power-ups. On the first level you'll just be given speed ups, while later levels will furnish your craft with shields (front and side versions, never both) side wing blasters, dual lasers and tri-lasers. The downside, one hit; one impact; one randomly spawning enemy appearing ATOP you; means death. Death then also means that you have to start over with NO speed, No powers. You're back to basic bog-standard ship and it's time to build it all up again. This in the later levels is a ... nightmare. Actually in the first level it's a fucking nightmare of some degree.

This brings me to the odd system of the game’s powerup supplies. You get to shoot background pods/objects, which will do several things. 1) Blow up with nothing inside, 2) blow up with a bullet fired back AT you or 3) give you a power up. But it's not the pods that have the power-ups and the order/sequence of the powerups depends upon the ones that you SHOOT, so the first level, first speed up power up WILL spawn when you shoot your first pod. No matter WHICH pod. So powerups appear on every Nth pod shot, not pod that exists.

It's an interesting system perhaps implemented for memory reasons, or an oversight on coding and references. Hard to say at this point but I've not really encountered many other games that use similar ones. Imagine Zelda where you got the master sword after the 8th chest you open, irrespective of the actual chest, so you could grab it in the hometown if you opened 7 other chest somewhere else. Not ideal for every game. But it works in this game to a degree.

The majority of enemies within the game will fly in, pattern formation, then disappear off, or fly in, shoot repeatedly and try to ram you at the same time. Fun bunch of bastards. Then there's the odd system of those enemies that turn up and home in on you, but will happily sit right behind you if you're higher than them on the screen, but you can't go backwards, you don't have anything that shoots backwards, so you have to out manoeuvre them, which is almost impossible at the point of having no speed power ups.

The game is heavily punishing for mistakes. BUT, having said that, it is rather generous with the lives, boosting them regularly on the score multiples.

Having said that, I could happily play the game for hours and do NOTHING but listen to the music within the game, be it the introduction or the main music, or even the piece accompanying the name entry sequence for entering in a high-score. The musical score and composition is amazingly well presented and would be worthy of anybody's time to listen to, which most players will do while playing the game anyway. Though the "electric synth" solo does feel a little out of place, but it's the 80s so grind that axe away!

That said, the game isn't R-Type, nor Gradius/Nemesis, it's not complicated enough to be that and not fluid enough to warrant the attention some of the more smooth games can muster, but it has its charm and those looking for challenge on the C64 that isn't about not biting your own arms off in frustration and bashing your genitals with them, could do worse than looking to Hades Nebula.

Or you know, use some poke and peeks and cheat your way through.