Xotic Review
|
I was fortunate enough to have a small amount of overlap with the now endangered species known as arcade cabinets. Mind you, I’m not so old that I got to marvel at the majesty of their golden age, but some of my misspent youth was spent in some of the last true arcades before the mass extinction hit. I was a picky little bastard about the games I liked. I was all about twitch and go games largely based on instinct for the first quarter and memorization for whatever quarters I could get before my mom cut me off. Hated Donkey Kong Jr. but loved Galaga and any Metal Slug games I could find. Of course I loved the side scrolling Simpson’s beat-em-ups and a weird fighting game with a Pepsi themed fighter that I sometimes worry I dreamed up, but those are not applicable here.
If Xotic had a time machine, it would drop its RPG elements in favor of a power-up system and launch itself back into a cabinet to munch quarters. Its a shooter that plays like an arcade game with combo counters, multipliers, and level designs that demand replays; a game all about the almighty high score. Right now I am writing this seething at whatever imperceptible mistakes I managed to make that left me ranked #56 instead of #1 on my best level. Sure, it feels good to be above several thousand other people, but those 55 people above me are all that matter. Now that I have maxed out my weapon and character levels, I am driven by a need to revisit those levels and secure my rightful place atop the ranking system. This is the same sickness that drove me to play the same song in Audiosurf fifty times compels me.  What do you see? I see combos waiting to happen. This high score addiction comes wrapped up in a package a bit more dense then your typical arcade game, such as those RPG elements I mentioned. You play as a creature created to drive back an evil being of pure energy called The Orb. This Mr. The Orb grew bored as a god-like being of ultimate power, and decided to ravage planets for fun. Leaving the planets covered in a corruption that takes the form of red pulsing scabs, floating brains left behind to monitor the planet, lots of glowing items that are worth points, and a variety of baddies who all want to shoot you. By shooting everything you possibly can you gain points, by collecting everything shiny you gain points, by hunting down all the hidden brains you get points, and by going as fast and efficiently as you can you get points. Wait a second, I was talking about those RPG elements! Damn you, high score addiction!
Among all those delicious, delectable, and desirable points you also earn yourself skill point rewards for completing levels and challenges. You can use these to upgrade your characters four aspects, each three times. You can upgrade energy levels, which are ammo for primary and secondary weapons. It’s a recharging bar but upgrades increase bar size and charge speed. You could upgrade your health bar, allowing you to take more bullets in the pursuit of high score glory. Armor is another good choice, as it reduces the amount of damage each hit you take does with each level you pump into it. Lastly you can upgrade your ability to absorb glowy things on the levels from larger distances, glowy things like health, energy, and, of course, points. Each of these four aspects are useful and work in conjunction with the other three, making the order you upgrade them change how you approach a level. Of course you could always spend these skill points on your living symbiotic gun so it can shoot all kinds of neat things at baddies, scabs, and brains in the levels.  I named my living gun Gunther, and we are pals. Your living gun is your only companion, unless you count the creepy synthesized voice of the narrator. The gun looks like a massive bug you shoved your arm inside of, and its appearance changes to reflect the weapon you’re currently squeezing out of its face. If you set the little cutie up for long range, a proboscis that shoots sniper like lasers rolls out of its mouth. Want it to shoot smaller, exploding bugs that home in on enemies, and you will see those little buggers riding on its back. It’s a nice visual cue for the various weapons. Despite the alien names the weapon modes have, you will be familiar with most if you have a background in shooter. You have a standard fire that costs no energy, a sniper round that is high in energy use, a shotgun like mode that’s great for short range and terrible for long, homing missiles, a debilitating electrical shock, various grenade like items, and a larger high damage missile that doesn’t home. These can all be upgraded three times, just like the character traits.
This variety is nice, but it is unfortunately crippled a bit by a small limitation to key binding options. This complaint won’t apply to everyone, but for players who depend on the scroll wheel to handle weapon changes or really like to use those extra buttons on gaming mice, it will be a frustration for sure. I live and die by my mouse 4 and 5 buttons in most fast paced games. They are easily accessed by my thumb and are the quickest bindings I can memorize. Changing my primary weapon with the mouse wheel is all I know in every shooter I have ever played. So when I found out I couldn’t bind the scroll wheel or my extra mouse buttons I knew I was in trouble. I just can’t swap weapons fast enough to really utilize them efficiently, and binding them to keys just means leaving my precious WASD home and that makes me both sad and worse at a particular level then 55 other people in the world. I am a firm believer that if a game is going to be developed for the PC, then it should allow full control customization; anything less then that is just infuriating. (The mouse wheel complaint has been patched away for the Steam version!)  I imagine feeding him bits of enemies to encourage these evolutions. Thankfully though this is the only complaint I can lay at this games feet. The level designs are varied and range from pure horizontal corridors to open environments that are nice and vertical. The vertical levels shine in particular as they encourage creative use of one of my favorite mechanics in the game: solid holograms. You can rely on the environment for cover, and you can also deploy shimmering barriers in front of yourself. If you deploy these barriers while your airborne they will become instant platforms for your to scale into the air on. While they are fun and useful in combat, my love for them comes from how they impact level routes as you perfect a run.
Hovering crystals litter levels, and if you collect groupings of them in one jump they come with a bonus. This really makes you think on your feet as you try to run and gun at the same time through these levels. You could come back for those floaty guys, but if you manage to hop on your platforms as you go, shooting at the ground based targets the entire time, its worth far more points in the end. Of course being up in the air often exposes you to all kinds of gunfire, so sometimes you need to gun down a few baddies, loop back around for a point multiplier, then begin shooting some scabs for chain reaction combos as you climb your platforms to leap off of and collect groupings of crystals for air combos.  This will take some consideration... That’s what this game is all about, really. The first time you play a level its about exploration over speed, as you need to know where the enemies, the power ups, and the hidden targets are. Repeat plays of the level will see you looking to string combos for as long you can, grab multipliers at just the right time for maximum payoff, and collecting the combat based powerups just before turning a corner and confronting the more dangerous enemies on that map. Depending on how into this sort of formula you are, you can stay nice and entertained for several laps through the same level, each time constructing a more efficient system of completing everything for the most possible points.
Speaking of levels, the game is divided into four worlds, each world is comprised of several levels and challenge maps. Once you finish the first level of each world a branching path system opens and you can choose which levels to complete first, with each other offering a different amount of skill points as reward and a time to beat. Complete enough levels in a world to unlock the next world, for crazy people looking to finish the game for some reason as opposed to playing every possible level. I suppose it allows for players to bypass a particularly hard level in favor of leveling up some more and coming back to it later, but I wouldn’t know about that. This offers just the right amount of levels, enough to be varied and keep the settings interesting, but not so many that you get overwhelmed thinking about replaying them all in pursuit of a better score.  Sometimes the baddies shoot back. This often makes me sad. This game is the Trials 2 of the shooter genre. It’s not about kill to death ratios, or levels brimming with enemies. It has no multiplayer component outside of a good old fashioned high score board. It’s all about your own personal perfection, playing until you can’t do it any better, and then trying it again. Its not the most beautiful game in the world, though its not hard on the eyes either, nor is it the most complex of games with any kind of deep story telling. It has mechanics for you to master, and worlds for you to master them in. Its an old fashioned kind of game given a new coat of paint, and sometimes that can be a truly engaging experience. Or you just have a problem and this game is nothing more then a high score pusher, giving you another fix and secretly hoping to ruin your marriage. Either way, it’s a thing of beauty. |
Thanks for the review! We just released version 1.2 of Xotic yesterday. Among other things, it allows you to use the mouse wheel to scroll your primary and secondary weapons. A full list of new features in v1.2 is available on our forums at: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1219
That is awesome to hear! Thanks for the heads up!