DYSTORIA

Review

Aliens stole my husband! Forced to fight Insectoids on neon zero-G space labyrinths to a background of funky 80's music.

After a short intro, you are abducted by an organisation called Omniam, and taken to a distant galaxy, where you wake up in a room and are consequently informed as to why you’ve been taken. Here you’ll find a computer which will store the various messages that you gain as you go through the game. A holographic display shows the parts of a powerful hovership as you find them; there are eighteen parts hidden around the various levels, and once you collect them all, the new hovership will be yours.

Next is the console for the hover ships you own, and its weaponry. You start off with a basic ship (Sceptre) and a plasma gun. There are eight more ships which you can unlock by collecting scraps after you’ve defeated an enemy; these will float around until you gather them. Collecting a thousand scraps will give you the option to unlock one of three hoverships; after that they go up in price. Each ship has its own stats, such as Speed, Handling, Acceleration and Shield; the better the ship, the more durable it is.

You pilot around the space labyrinths hovering just above the surface, which allows you to move with ease in any direction - up walls, ceilings inside and out. You’re looking for three orbs; once you have all three then the Exit Portal will open, allowing you to leave for the next level.

You can become confused and disoriented as you go over the edge and onto another surface of the labyrinth. Checking your map will help you find those extra Nucleons, or see whether there’s an enemy on the next surface. Sometimes you can get decoupled from a surface; if this happens you’ll have a few seconds to get back to a surface, otherwise it’s game over.

The ships come with Primary One, Primary Two and Secondary weapons. You start with a Primary One weapon - a Plasma Blast - which isn’t too bad, but obviously you’ll need more firepower as you progress. To be able to get better weapons you’ll have to collect little yellow diamond-shaped Nucleons; each one you collect is worth 10 credits. Collect enough Nucleons and start upgrading your ship to give you maximum firepower. Primary One weapons consist of Plasma Blast, Laser Cannon and Electron Beam. Primary Two has Orbital Laser, Orbital Electron Beam, and Missiles. Secondary weapons consist of Homing Missiles, Proximity Blast and Speed Burst. Whichever weapons you choose, they with be available on any subsequent spaceships.

With each new sector, there’ll be three objectives: collect all the Nucleons, kill all the enemies, and do it within a certain amount of time. To be able to get to the next level you’ll have to collect three orbs, which, once attained, will open a portal that ends the current level. This will then bring up the end of level stats, score, Nucleons collected, and whether or not you completed the three objectives etc.

The game has all the typical settings, such as Audio, Video and Controller settings. In the audio you’ll find volume sliders for Music, Sound Effects and Voice. In the video settings there are three graphical pre-sets to choose from: Decent (Medium), Radical (High) and Awesome (Best). Along with these you can also change Shadows, Textures, Antialiasing and Vysnc. I chose the Awesome setting and it runs very smoothly on my 760GTX and looks really nice.

Under Controller settings you’ll find Invert Axis, Look Sensitivity, Camera Distance and Camera Tightness. You can either set Inverted Axis for all, or select them as and how you please. You can also Assign, Calibrate and Remove any controllers you wish to use. I did try playing with an Xbox Pad, but for some reason it just didn’t save properly, so I’d have to use a gamepad at the start of each level, which is a bit of a pain. That said, after having this problem, I tried the keyboard and mouse option, and to be honest I think it plays and feels a lot better than using a gamepad.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!