Review by Matt C. What does Santa do when someone steals all the Christmas presents? A regular old St Nick might give up, or work extra hard to create a new stash of gifts. Not Aru, the bunny-eared, anime girl Santa, though – no, when someone steals her presents, she…
Read MoreReview by Jim S. Dogos is a new SHMUP that has a classic gameplay style. These games are an acquired taste, but for the genre’s fans, the difficulty and sense of rewards are equal drawcards, as is the sheer action that the best examples of the genre are able to…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Nick H. One of the really cool things my dad did for me as a kid was rent me a new NES game just about every weekend. It was a cheap way to play a lot of different games, and I’d get them finished, too, as video…
Read MoreReview by Dylan C. There’s a purity to shmups that really speaks to me. I’m not sure if it’s the easy to pick-up-and-play, but tough to master strategy and challenge behind them. Or the simple, unpretentious motivation of manoeuvring your unassuming space vessel between a multitude of hazards, in your…
Read MoreKromaia Omega deserves a gold trophy and a plaque that reads “most ambitious shoot ’em up of the decade”. It’s not as though the genre is starved for novel ideas; there have been countless shakeups to the classic 1980s arcade formula with titles like 99 Bullets and Everyday Shooter that…
Read MoreIn this day and age a lot of things try to be fast paced in order to fit with the tastes of the easily distracted. But how do you make something fast paced? Through the speed of gameplay? Giving players a ticking clock to keep their pulses beating as they…
Read MoreDespite what other reviews are saying, Reign of Bullets is more Metal Slug than Borderlands. To describe the game in the most blunt fashion as possible: it gets right what most scrolling shooters struggle at, with light-hearted humour, cartoony graphics, simple yet addictive upgrading system, and excellent production values. This…
Read MoreGradius V was the final Gradius release from Konami, back in 2004, and was originally released on the PlayStation 2. It has now come back as a PS2 Classic and has been made available on the PlayStation Network to a new audience. As I originally said in my Soldner-X 2:…
Read MoreWe rarely get to play unfriendly characters these days in video games, let alone evil genocidal maniacs. Rack N Ruin, a top-down Zelda-esque indie title with a bit of SHMUP thrown in, hopes to present us with just that opportunity. But instead of handing us the reigns of a charismatic…
Read MoreSoldner-X 2: Final Prototype is a re-release of a 2010 PlayStation 3 game, and is what seems to be one of thousands of shoot-em-ups set in space we’ve seen recently. The original came with a mixed, but mostly positive response, and has now found a home on the Vita, a…
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