Project NeXt - Mobile Gaming

Story:
“Green code! the war just began, move on move on! One of the united anti-terrorist special forces' troops, air troop "BLADES", formed of the modern "Su-30", is sent to the tiny Archipelago in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. According to our intelligence there are terrorist training camps based on the island.”

The terrorists seems to be planning something bad, very bad, and this time it all depends on you to stop this before it turns even worse! The duty calls you, and your duty is answer that duty! Shoot, destroy, avoid missiles, kill, destroy, destroy and destroy! Your mission is simple; just blow up everything you can see and try to keep your ass alive while you do it. If you’re looking for some action, sit down and enjoy. Let's Start!

Design:
The game isn't very complex, it's very simple and can be compared with a normal casual game due. When you open the game, you see the normal opening images, with a very nice "cut-scene" from Herocraft. It also loads quite fast, so after just a few seconds, you're already in the game.

The menu is simple, and I always prefer this way to choose options. You have the entire menu within a small area, due to its selection system, with only one option displayed at a time and changeable with the "up" and "down" keys. Within the settings menu, you can turn "on" or "off" the sound, which isn't really important due to the quantity of sound effects in the game, and change the difficulty level between "pro" and "ace". Although both names sound hard, there actually isn't a big difference between them.. but is always good to have this option, like emotional support. The final detail is that when you finish the game or have advanced many levels, you can choose to reply a certain level, but only if you have completed the levels before it.

I must say thanks to Herocraft with the help section, as it's very complete with detailed information, and now I know the names of the different weapons.

You have two main weapons and two special powers within the game. The weapons are: "Light Rapidfire Gun", which can be improved while the game advances, up to level 4 where you shoot 5 simultaneous bullets. The "Magnum Cannon" is a kind of slow motion lightning ball. This one can be improved only once to shoot 2 balls simultaneously.

The special powers are: "Energy Gun", a laser that goes from the shooting point to the end of the screen in a straight line or from the top of your ship to the end of the screen moving with you, if you upgrade the energy gun to a "space wrapper". "Rockets", depending if you upgrade or not, can be shot one or two at the same time. Once you shoot, there is no way to change direction, but the damage it makes is very big. he game only offer's power ups for weapons, some repair icons for when you're damaged and some bonus icons to rise up the score. You can't unlock anything nor win anything here, what you see up to level 13 is what the game has, that's all.

There are three main types of enemies within the game:

• Normal 'Static' Enemies: you can find "rocket launchers", "laser shooters" and "electric shooters". You can also find some "static basses", which don't move but have a large life bar.
  
  
• Normal 'Dynamic' Enemies: You can find "choppers", "jets", and some "navy ships", all of them shooting normal bullets. Also, "rocket launchers" and "UFOs"; the latter can shoot lasers but also electric attacks. These two have different designs, so you can recognize them easily. There are some boats too, without weapons.. not hard to kill and good for the scoring.
  
  
• Bosses: There are some normal ships moving everywhere with a lot of life, but aren't really hard to kill.

Now the graphics may not be the best, but surely they're better than many other game of this genre. The menu itself is nice, as it has a good color combination and isn't heavy for your sight. You see a metallic futuristic theme just as it has to be with this kind of game. Once you start the game you can note the tile-graphic style, you have your ship, the water with some square islands. The tiles don't try to be realistic, is a very cartoon style scenario, in the sense that is obvious isn't real. You play on tropical islands and after above some snowy ice lands. Your ship has animation when you move left or right, or when you die. The rest of the time the only animation is just the fire from the engines. The enemies are also very simple, and they use a preloaded path when moving. The choppers always go in the same way, one in back of the other. The jets go in V-line, and only the UFOs move everywhere. There are also some land shooter enemies which are always squared; the game needs this to make things fit each tile.

In the early stages the scenario is very quiet, but in advanced levels it becomes a real show of lights in all the map. The particle effect presented in the game is really good, the explosions in groups and all the bullets,rockets and lasers at the same time make it a very good looking game. The world details are in 3D in the 3D version, and in the 2D version only the trees have 3D effects, it is very nice. Then there is the water motion but out of that there are no other special effects, nor big animations. The HUD "Heads-Up Display" Interface is compact enough to provide you with the basic information you need to see during gameplay, such as "distance", "weapons" to the top, "number of lives", etc.

The game's sound, in general, isn't very good. There's a normal 'midi' soundtrack for the menu section; nothing really impressive, but at least it goes ok with the rest of the design. There is no music during the gameplay.. very bad because sound is very important for games. But I guess it's better to have silence than have another annoying midi music track just like in the menu. You'll hear some sound effects during the gameplay when you kill certain enemies and when you pick up some power ups icons, the rest of the time there are no sounds at all.

Gameplay:
The controls are simple: the "2", "4", "6", and "8" keys are used to move and you can combine them to move diagonally. You can change the main weapon by pressing the "#" (pound) key, and the special powers by pressing the "*" (star) key, given that you have more than one available, of course. The very bad thing with the game is that you can't stop shooting. It's very annoying during the firsts levels, but after that you get used to it.

The game is not hard in the beginning actually, and there aren't many enemies nor elements. This doesn't means that the game is always easy. From levels one through four, it's all about to killing everything without loosing any lives. But starting at the fifth level, the objective changes from killing everything to just keeping yourself alive and trying to finish the level.You can play hours and hours, just as i did, but you won't find new weapons, ships, enemies or whatever. During the game you'll always use the same "die hard" ship to fight against the "I don't know how to avoid bullets" enemies, and this way you will surely kill more than you getting killed.

A good frame-rate ensures that there are no slow downs in this game. The average gameplay time is around 1 hour; not too much, but is good to have some fast action for the bus or free time. There is also a highscores table so you can try to get better if you want.

Conclusion:
Despite all the critiquing, I enjoyed this game very much. But at the time of reviewing we need to be the most objective as possible. The game is very fun, but it has a lot of issues that need to be addressed, as you have read above. Comparing this game with the casual genre isn't bad actually. It's the kind of game that you can easily play during your first time just for fun. You don't need to pay much attention to the story, so it is a perfect shooter game. A lot of action and fast access make this game a very good piece. We aren't compensated for making our reviews here, so I want you to believe me when I say, “Congratulations, Herocraft.. I've played this game at least 5 times and i didn't get tired of it. I really liked this game very much.”.

Silver Award

Video Trailer: