Dark Old Sun

Review

The Earth is in crisis! All energy resources are about to hit rock bottom and the fate of humanity is hanging by a thread! Meanwhile, a group of astronomers has identified a rather strange black star that emanates extremely bright light. This small star appears to have an abundance of energy which surely would save humanity from extinction if it could be harvested! They figured out how to extract this energy safely and bring it back to the citizens of Earth. This second chance at life has indeed been celebrated by everyone, including warlords, one of whom has managed to steal one of the biggest and most powerful spaceships of the human fleet, The VoidWalker! What is he up to now? Oh, Dark Old Sun!

Dark Old Sun is a Shoot’Em up game where you take control of one of six vessels and your goal is to destroy the VoidWalker in order to win the game.

The game has of several modes of play.  The Story and Arcade modes are basically the same, with the small difference that you’ll be told a story (in writing) between stages. There are 6 stages in these modes and you’ll be able to choose your level of difficulty (normal, hard or extreme) as well as choosing how to upgrade your vessel within the stages (classic or advanced). If you choose the classic option, your spaceship will receive automatic upgrades, while the advanced option will give you the choice of what to upgrade or change on your vessels at any given time, as long as you have collected enough golden crystals to do so.

In the survival mode, you have to eliminate wave after wave of enemies for as long as you can until your death! The difficulty level will increase after each wave - a tough mode, to be really honest with you, which is great!

The third one is the challenge mode which has short games based on retro titles - they are great fun and hard. I’ll let you discover them!

The gameplay in the Story and Arcade mode is pretty good. As I mentioned above, you have to go through 6 challenging stages. What I really like about this game is the fact that you can move your ship all around the screen as well as rotating it to shoot at enemy vessels wherever they happen to appear. Each time you destroy an enemy ship, a few golden crystals will appear at that location and will start falling down towards the bottom of your screen. Move your ship onto these crystals to collect them; pick up as many as possible, as you’ll need plenty of crystals to upgrade your ship.  Your spaceship will be equipped with primary and secondary weapons. There are 5 to choose from for each category (primary and secondary) and you can change them at any given time without using your golden crystals.  Drones are basically your super weapons and when activated, will help you go through difficult sections of the game, but only for a certain period of time.  There are a total of four drones to choose from and you can swap from one to another without using any golden crystals. You also have 3 types of ability and can upgrade your armour and generator.  You’ll start using your crystals when you want to upgrade specific attributes. For example, you might decide to upgrade from one to five projectiles from your primary or secondary weapons.  You can also upgrade the drone’s lifetime, as well as your armour and generator. All of these options will cost a certain number of golden crystals, so keep shooting at the enemies!

Within each of the stages, the game will automatically save three times. The first two will give you additional golden crystals and regenerate your life (shield/armour, in this case). The third save will occur just before the boss fights. Boy they are fun, but they can be frustrating, especially while playing the hard or extreme difficulty levels. In any case, each of the bosses has to be defeated three times in order to win the fight.  And yes, their looks and style of fighting will vary within each of these three phases of combats.

Graphically, the games looks good and runs very well. The soundtrack is great too, which is always a plus!  The content is very good for the asking price and this game offers great re-playability!