REVIEW : Orbital Bullet – The 360° Rogue-lite (PC)
I’m always excited to try out a new platformer, especially if the artwork is pixelated. I think we’re kicking in nostalgia. I played loads of great platformers, and some average and some terrible platformers too. I never played a 360-degree compact stage platformer and I was delighted that my first circular platformer had the opportunity to do it. I asked myself, “Will I get dizzy?” before I started my replay. No. – Seriously, my big fear was whether I’d appreciate the Orbital Bullet experience?
On your first game, you’ll begin with a short tutorial, and once you finish it, the mayhem begins! You’ll only be allowed to play with one of the four classes accessible to you throughout your first few runs. On your initial runs, I believe it is the Mercenary Class, but I’m not sure because all of the character classes appear the same to me. Engineer, Hellion, and Marauder are the other classes.
Each planet has a certain amount of short levels. The majority of them will have two circles that you can move between by utilising the white switches on the floor. Of course, you’ll encounter opponents of various kinds in these circles. Some will charge at you, shooting grenades, while others will stand still and fire at you as soon as you are within their shooting range. You even have a couple of armoured animals, and no matter what you shot at them, it does nothing.
The only method to damage their armour is to jump on their backs first, making them defenceless. Another ground unit has a large shield, and the only way to defeat it is to fire at it from behind. You might locate a cannon in one of the two circles if you’re lucky, and they’re lethal. For a few seconds, their yellow laser beam will cover the entire circle; you’ll need to either rapidly switches circles or evade the beam by jumping or dashing on time. If you are hit, you will lose a significant portion of your health. There are also flying opponents, one of whom can even launch a bomb from one circle to the next. Actually, a single ground unit can achieve the same thing. The first few levels are normally easy, but it soon becomes chaotic after that.
As you kill foes, some will drop credits that you may spend to buy perks or new weapons from merchants. Each planet often has two, if not three, merchants’ stores. They will occasionally drop Nanobytes, which are these blue triangle icons that you may use to upgrade new perks/abilities before starting your next run. In some stages, you can also locate them in a capsule, which must be broken before you may pick them up. There are also dice with blue icons on them, which are strewn about at random. They are the random perks of your current run, so attempt to obtain them. Weapons and credit chests are also available.
The second exciting element is that your character will have four skills that you may upgrade during each run, but you can only improve them at the upgrade stations at the merchant’s stores, and you can generally find one or two somewhere within the stages. Before you may advance to the next level, you must add an additional four skills (required) at a station at some time on each planet. As you defeat foes, the experience gauge on the right side of the screen will fill up, and when it’s full, you’ll gain a point to use to increase your perks; each time you refill the gauge, you gain another point.
The boss fights are also enjoyable, and they will become more difficult as you move to the next planet. However, once you’ve figured out the pattern and acquired amazing weapons, the next run becomes easier and simpler. I must admit, it took me a while to defeat the third boss.
When the game ends (either because of a memorable failure or because you’ve killed all the bosses thus far), you’ll be able to use your Nanobytes from previous runs to unlock new abilities and features in the game, such as the Alternate Dimension, where you can receive great additional goodies if you manage to kill all the enemies on the level in a short period of time. You can also use the fragment weapons you collected during your previous run to unlock new weapons.
All classes have three upgrades, however, you must perform particular objectives to obtain some yellow square icons.
REVIEW : The Falconeer – The Hunter (PC)
