Notice I’m referring to mouse controls here instead of a controller. Want to equip something? Just right-click on the item and bam! In the slot it goes. In the case of gear that has two slots, using the the mouse scroll wheel will toggle between the equipped items. When you mouse over a piece of gear, it clearly tells you what you lose and gain if you equip it. Once everything is in storage, you can then check to see if anything is an upgrade. Why that doesn’t happen automatically I’m not sure, but that’s a minor nitpick. Once you complete the level you head back to the hanger and dump everything from your hold into storage. Obviously, higher level missions drop higher level stuff. The drops have rarity levels and actual levels that determine how powerful it is. As you blow stuff up in a level, you get random drops. You’re going to have to pay attention to all of this, which is both a blessing and a curse. You have a lot of equipment slots on your ship to fill – one engine, shield, power, weapon and helmet (a helmet?) and two computer chips and two armor slots. Speaking of gear, let’s talk random drops. Some help you evade, others bolster your firepower and some do unique things like resurrect you. While your equipment can alter how effective skills are, I never felt that I had to change them out to match my gear. There are a nice variety of skills that keeps your setups interesting and fun to tinker with and they serve the combat in some fun ways. Coming back to the skills, having them adds a nice bit of stability to combat. As a quick side note, the game does allow you to completely rebind all actions on the controller, which is rather nice. A bit less so when trying to use the mouse and keyboard. By default these skills are mapped to the four buttons on a standard controller which makes them fairly easy to use. You can equip up to four skills which you can activate at anytime. The other reason you’ll want a controller is the skill system. While this game never gets into true danmaku or bullet curtain territory, things can get pretty chaotic in the later levels. This is a game that you will want a controller for, especially for the later levels. While the game does allow you to control it with the keyboard and mouse, I don’t recommend it. So how does this darn thing play? Well as I’ve mentioned several times, it is very solid shmup in all aspects. The audio feedback from shooting, hitting enemies, getting hit, and enemies going boom is all good, as is the visual feedback. Towards the end I started noticing some repetition, but it was nothing major. This is a bit of a problem as the game’s design is such that you’ll be replaying levels. The tracks that play during missions are very good, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of them. The audio design is solid, though nothing to write home about. Both the levels themselves and the screens back on the home ship all feel like they are part of the same world, and the transition between the two is seamless. Every single aspect of the visual design of this game fits together in an excellent way. Alkemi has created a gorgeous game that is going to age very, very well. OK, enough griping about the story, this is a shmup after all, so what about the rest of the game? Well to start things off, the aesthetic is beautiful. If they had set this in some arbitrary Not-Earth setting, it would have served them much better. The real tragedy of this is that visually, this world is beautiful. 100% standard sci-fi fill-in-the-blank post-apocalypse setting. Really, it’s more an annoyance than anything else, but it might have been salvageable if the setting was something worth caring about. You can’t ignore the story either, you have to click through the dialog sequences so you can get at the mission. It tries to get you interested by starting in media res, but all it did was confuse the heck out me. The problem here is the story is thrust in your face in such a way that you just can’t ignore it.
#DRIFTING LANDS MOVIE#
One does not watch a classic Godzilla movie for quality acting, and one does not play a shmup for an enthralling story. Normally, such a thing wouldn’t even be a footnote. Yes, I know, I’m complaining about the story in a shmup. The story is one of the most non-engaging messes I’ve encountered in games in a long time.
Random Loot: Loot has levels and random bonusesĪlright, so let’s get the sour out of the way first, because I really feel this game deserves a review that ends on a high note.Random Levels: In most levels the enemy waves are randomly generated.70 Skills: Many active and passive skills to choose from, each with their own distinct feel.Multiple Hulls: You have three hull-types to choose from, each with their own play style.Price at time of review: $18.99 Drifting Lands Features
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