One Hour Review: NovaStrike

Reviews in the gaming industry are always faulted. This score is too high, this score is too low. They didn't play the game enough. The list goes on and on. A review should be used to basically determine if a game is worth playing/buying. Now every reviewer on the planet will be reviewing the big titles, and most will review any other big titles. So why try to emulate them, might as well forge your own path. That is why I am doing the One Hour Review. No the review isn't an hour long, jeez. I am going to describe what I can about a game after only one hour of gameplay, so install and download times do not count. Since I am only playing a small part of the game, I am not giving a number score. The review will be broken down into two parts, the intro, which I will describe what I can without playing it. And the actual review. Still with me? Lets give it a shot.

NovaStrike

NovaStrike is a shooter from Tiki Games, Inc. It can be found on the PlayStation Store for $10. The description of the game (which can be found here) promises 7 stages, that doesn't really sound too pleasing. Two more than Super Stardust HD, but three less than Everyday Shooter. Free Roaming Flight, um...yeah, par for the course nowadays. Progressive weapon acquisition and upgrade system, once again nothing spectacular. Promises a bunch of different types of enemies. Well, nothing really stands out so far. But hey, that's why we play the game right?

(One hour of play later)

The controls were the first thing that bothered me. Left stick moves you, like in most other games similar to this, but you shoot with the L2 and R2 buttons, L2 for the ground weapons, R2 for your main weapon. If you are used to SSHD and Everyday Shooter's control schemes, this will throw you off. Using the trigger has another huge disadvantage. While realistic, you can only shoot the way you are facing, which sucks in the middle of a heated firefight. Also the "one hit and you die" doesn't apply here. Your health is shown by a green thing which looks like a chicken, I think it might be the emblem of the army or your ship, not sure. You have a regenerating shield, and a afterburner used by hitting X.

There are a bunch of cool weapons, besides your default machine gun and flamethrower, you will end up picking up bombs, spread missiles, lasers, and my favorite, the electric mine. Lay one down and whoever flies near it gets zapped. Plus they do more damage than your machine gun.

The game offers a bunch of different types of missions (okay, only four so far) 1. Defend a base. 2. Defend a ship 3. Attack a base 4. Attack a ship. Sometimes you might get help from allies. The bombers are pretty decent, but the fighters suck, they usually get gunned down pretty quick. Well, unless they crash into you first.

Defending a base is simple, destroy the bombers attacking the target while avoiding the fighters. Not too bad. Defending ships is more difficult, usually because of the AI. The only mission I did had the target ships fly RIGHT OVER an enemy base. And what the anti air guns didn't take out, the rest of the enemies (and my idiot allies, go figure) finished them off. Luckily, failing a mission does not mean game over.

Attacking a base is a chore, you have to use hit and run tactics (a lesson I learned the hard way) to take out the outside turrets, then attack the inner structures. Not really as fun as you would think. Probably because your ground weapons are pathetic, on the easiest setting (which I played on, I suck at these kind of games) it takes two direct hits from your bomb (which you pick up later, you start with some flamethrower thing as your ground weapon) to wipe out a structure. It becomes tedious fast. Not to mention the enemy turrets can wipe you out fast. Turrets that can shoot pink energy blasts are very lethal, one of them can drop you fast. Very fast.

Attacking a ship also fails to entertain. Luckily both ships I encountered had the same death dealing turrets that wiped me out when I tried to bomb the base. So you had to keep your distance, swoop in, shoot it as much as you can, then fly off and let your shield recover, rinse, repeat.

Graphics, if you don't have a HD TV, it will take awhile to get used to. Out of the games 7 (according to them) stages, the first two were on the same planet. An earth look alike. Most of the time all you will see is water. The few structures are pretty dull, nothing too exciting. The regular ships are nothing special. But the bigger ships are nicely detailed, of course after staring at water for so long, ANYTHING looks awesome. The explosions are nice, especially the buildings. The ships go down quite nicely too. But, nothing spectacular.

The story, who cares. The bad guys are trying to invade the good guys' home planet, so you have to stop them. This game tries, but no one plays these for the story. The music is bland and forgetful, some might even say sleep-inducing.

There are better top-down shooters out there. If you have not bought Super Stardust or Everyday Shooter, I would definitely pick those up instead. If you are a huge fan of the genre, then you will probably like this game. This game is pretty average, nothing stands out about it. Even though there is supposedly more content to be released in the future for this game, I doubt it would be anything worth the price of admission. There are better games out there.