FirePower-onrush
by ManaSoft, Price:
$14.95
Reviewed February 2004 by Tony Peak
ManaSoft's FirePower is making a bit of
a surprise entrance on the Pocket PC. Fans of arcade shoot-em-ups
from yesteryear will find a lot to love with FirePower, but
newcomers and casual fans won't be left out. Not only are
the graphics a dead match for the Neo-Geo days, the gameplay
maintains an impressive level of depth above and beyond most
arcade shooters.
The gameplay of Firepower is deceptively
simple. Under the pick up and play shooter is all the depth
serious fans of the genre would hope to find. Destroying
background items and waves of enemies will reward you medals,
which in turn rewards score, and at enough score grants extra
lives. Four main stages along with four sub-stages make for
quite a long experience, so you'll need every last one. The
two choices of ship change gameplay drastically between easy
and hard, as each controls quite differently. It's a quite
clever way of making the game both accessible to all and
challenging to old pros.
Enemy AI is quite impressive throughout.
Almost nothing in the game is a simple static sprite, everything
moves, flies, rolls, and attacks with realistic accuracy.
Tanks get knocked back by the force of their shots, planes
fly in formation, and lasers charge before firing it's all
very impressive. Bullet patterns and enemy waves are varied,
challenging, but never cheap.
The controls are sure to give a few people
trouble, but once I practiced with them for a bit they fit
perfectly. Stylus control is possible, but I really don't
recommend it. The hardware game controls are actually quite
perfectly suited. Firing is done via an autofire toggle to
free your hand for movement, super attacks are a single button
press, and movement is very, very accurate.
FirePower's graphics never fail to be both
eye catching and highly functional. The multiple layers of
scrolling make the game feel both extremely fluid and exceptionally
detailed. The sprites all feature an abundant amount of high
quality animation and the color schemes blend wonderfully
together. It can be a little difficult to keep track of enemy
fire at times, but with practice it's not a big deal. Firepower
also features an enjoyable, if somewhat simple, arcade like
soundtrack and very well suited sound effects throughout.
I thoroughly enjoyed FirePower from the
first mission to the last, and every replay in between. There's
plenty to keep fans playing, and plenty to enjoy. If I had
one complaint, it would simply be that a level based save
would have been great for the Pocket PC. Each level takes
upward of ten minutes, and with no save and continue later
feature it's rather all or nothing. Either you play the entire
game, or quit and lose your progress. Hardly enough to take
anything away from this great shooter though. |
