REVIEW : REMOTE LIFE (XBOX Series X)
If you’re looking for a difficult scrolling shooter with twin-stick action and amazing graphics, REMOTE LIFE is the game for you.
A twin-stick shmup
It’s surprising how few games mix twin-stick shooting controls with classic shoot ’em up gameplay, but REMOTE LIFE is one of them. It’s designed in such a manner that you take on a series of missions from the main menu, each of which is fairly difficult to complete, so even if you’re moderately good, you’ll wind up chipping away at the levels every time you play. Needless to say, soaring through the surroundings as your target and shooting down invading aliens is a lot of fun, but there is no scoring system, so leaderboard climbers will be disappointed. Gley Lancer is a great game if you want anything similar.
You’ll start with only one of three ships available, with the other two unlocked at different rankings based on mission accomplishment. It just takes a few levels to unlock the other two, and there appears to be a speed difference in the ships, as well as the ability to choose its colour from a few options. It’s as if there was a plan for different ships to play dramatically differently but then nothing came of it. Most shmups have you navigating your ship while the screen scrolls horizontally and you try to shoot anything in your path. What distinguishes REMOTE LIFE is that it also has twin-stick shooter features, which I don’t recall another shump doing recently.
This means you may navigate your ship with the Left Stick, but you aim your blaster with the Right, allowing you to shoot 360 degrees in any direction. With this mechanism, adversaries will not only attack you from the front, but also the back, above, below, and every other aspect.
It takes some getting used to because your blaster is on the tip of your ship’s nose rather than directly in the middle, thus you have to be aware of your ship’s hitbox and where you’re shooting from, as they are at separate positions. To make matters even more difficult, a single touch from an enemy or a barrier will instantly kill you, as is typical of games in this genre. What makes it difficult is that enemies and their projectiles do not appear to follow the same rules as you, thus you’ll constantly have foes flying through objects and shooting from afar, their bullets coming at you from every angle with nothing to stop them.
Of course, this appears to be rather unfair, but you’ll learn to live with it knowing that you can’t touch anything while enemies come right for you through anything in their path.
The majority of the missions are your usual 2D side-scrolling shmup, although there are a few occasions when things alter somewhat to keep things interesting. On rare occasions, you may be assigned an escort mission, flying alongside a much larger ship, attempting to shoot any aliens or obstructions in its path that will weaken its shields. The longer the ship lives, the more it can assist you. There are also a few sections where you may attach your spacecraft to this particular huge gadget, allowing you to play as a massive turret and blast anything in your path with ease for a few moments.
Beautiful graphics
The first thing you’ll notice with REMOTE LIFE is how beautiful the graphics are. It’s one of those games where every ship, alien, projectile, and landscape is pre-rendered rather than made out of polygons, similar to Daydreamer. There were a few games like this back in the ’90s, and it’s an underutilised graphical style because it looks extraordinarily different and can be just lovely, as it is here. Meanwhile, the audio is adequate, with an overbearing synth of music that muffles the effects and strange artificial voiceovers. In other words, I wish the sound design had received the same attention as the detailed images.
Varied firepower
REMOTE LIFE allows you to equip up to four weapons at the same time, with the three main weapons swappable at any time and the fourth being a strong attack with limited stock. I enjoy how much weaponry you have at your disposal, especially given how diverse some of the shot types are, ranging from bombs that explode into smaller projectiles to big wave-like lasers and a simple Vulcan to a delayed missile strike. It’s quite satisfying to switch weapons regularly and get to know what each one is capable of. Furthermore, you can control turrets and other items that occasionally appear mid-stage, potentially doubling your firepower. It would have been amazing to deploy the three major weapons using three different face buttons, but other than that, this is fantastic.
Frustrating stage designs
With all of that in mind, REMOTE LIFE is an extremely difficult game even on low mode, but not for the reasons you may think. Its stage designs, in particular, are downright nasty, with the most unpleasant moments coming in the shape of small areas that you must cross and doors that open and close. If you don’t fly through an entryway before it closes, you may become stranded behind and have to sacrifice a life, which doesn’t seem fair given that you’re already evading bullets and risks while attempting to aim. It’s a little excessive.
Furthermore, enemy projectiles can fade into the background or be too small to see. When you get struck by one of these bullets that you didn’t see coming, it’s upsetting and will eventually make you want to quit.
PREVIEW : Matchpoint – Tennis Championships (PC)
