Xenocide

After at least a year's development, Skullsoft Software have finally released their new vertically-scrolling shoot'em'up game, Xenocide - previously known as Extreme Force.

SkullSoft have decided to release the game as shareware. There is a free version which you can download that has only half the levels and some of the better power-ups missing as well as also lacking a save facility, with the full version costing £8 to buy from within the UK (£10 overseas).

The game is a forced-scrolling shoot'em'up which moves relentlessly onwards, with your craft flying up the screen quickly and without any pauses or backwards scrolling. If you move to the left or the right of the screen then the world view slides along with you, with the actual levels being twice as wide as the screen you actually see. What you can see of the level fills the screen, with a radar at the top-right warning you of approaching ships.

On starting up the game you're presented with a bewildering array of options before you even get into the game - you're dropped at a shop with the necessity to buy various abilities at various levels. This is initially confusing because you don't have any basis on which to make decisions, and there are far too many options. It also removes any immediacy from the game, which is a shame since the best shoot'em'ups are quick and easy to get into, with power-ups coming as rewards for performance, rather than all available as a start-up choice. That said, you buy power-ups with money, so you can upgrade as the game progresses, but it is a nasty barrier to actually getting into the game proper. If you don't buy anything (like I did on my first few goes) your ship is woefully inadequate! So you're forced to play the game a few times before you actually have a chance of knowing what you're doing. This is all rather pointless, since the game should simply start you with the best power-ups pre-bought - it could always let you change them if you wanted, but starting with a useless ship and the necessity to study a complex upgrade screen is silly.

^{Shopping fun}

Moving into the game proper, you're attacked immediately by absolutely tonnes of enemy ships, all of whom move linearly around the screen, with what looks like hundreds of chubby bullets flying around. It's incredibly confusing and you haven't got a hope of being able to avoid them all as you sit there watching your energy rapidly plummet until you die. This then repeats until you run out of lives. Or at least that's what happened to me - and that's on the apparently 'easy' skill level! With hundreds of fast-moving creatures on a screen with your big ship you just don't have a chance, especially since enemies sometimes need multiple hits to be destroyed.

^{Lots of bullets flying into me - what fun}

As you destroy things you can pick up tiny tokens which float around the screen almost invisibly. These give you money to spend at the shop at the end of the level, or recharge your shield. You'll be lucky to manage to pick many up, though, given their lack of visibility.

Graphically, the game is nothing special - there are some competently drawn sprites, but it's all a bit too bright and airy to convey any sort of tension or excitement, with the bullets in particular looking more like cartoon bubbles than lethal missiles. The backgrounds are immensely dull and unimaginative, too. Also missing is any in-game music, and the sound effects become tedious after about 30 seconds. It also runs in a low-res 320x256 mode.

The game is completely devoid of imagination - all the enemy ships fly on screen and follow straight lines without variety, as do enemy bullets. Worse-still, enemy installaions continue to attack you after you've flown past them, and you are regularly attacked by powerful enemies positioned off-screen and which you have never even seen. Worse game design would be hard to imagine. The playability dustbin is obviously dangerously full.

It isn't bug-free either - it has the annoying feature of crashing when you start a level sometimes, which seems to happen to me roughly every other time. It's also far too slow to have another go, since you must wait for the 'loading' screen to fade in, count up, and then fade out - and you have to visit the shop and tedious 'story' page too.

^{Bedtime reading}

If you have a Risc PC you'll find the game uncontrollable from the keyboard unless you choose your keys carefully, due to key-clash problems, but this is not really the game's fault! (You'll need to change from the default - easily done via the game menus)

All in all I found the game a major disappointment, especially after playing previous highly-competent shoot'em'up games, but then again the unregistered version is freely downloadable, so you've nothing to lose by giving it a go. But if you want to play a shoot'em'up, I'd recommend you dig out an emulator and find a better one - that won't be hard!

^{You'll see this lots}

Review ©Gareth Moore 1998

Requirements

You can download the demo of the game from SkullSoft's software download page or from Acorn Gaming. The full version costs £8 in the UK, or £10 outside the UK.

...this page last updated: 20/12/98...
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