Mars Revenge is a new spin on an old classic. It's Galaga / Galaxians combined with RPG elements and modern visuals.
The initial idea was to hand draw everything. Very quickly I decided that my drawing skills, while sometimes fun, are not quite up to the task of good game animation. I switched gears and started rendering everything using 3d animation software. The animations and visuals came out quite nicely. All of the visuals in this game are pre-rendered, resulting in very high resolution models.
Sound design is also strong, having benefitted from my experience producing small videos, where custom sounds had to be created.
When you are looking through the menus, or when the game is initially loading, you are kept entertained by the silly comments and helpful game tips at the bottom of the screen. There are some fully one liners in there. The tips advance on their own about once per minute, but pressing the 'Y' button on your controller also advances to the next tip.
The game play gets me hooked every time I play. I suppose I create a game that is ideal for me to play, but I hope that others find it just as addicting. When you begin the game, your ship is somewhat slow and weak, but so are the enemies. As you progress through the game, you earn experience points, and visit the upgrade center where you can upgrade many of your ships attributes, including such items as fire power, ship speed, bullet speed, shields strength and several others. Every 5th round is a bonus round where you have an opportunity to score a hefty amount of experience points, allowing you to really get some nice upgrades. The trick to these bonus rounds is to use your Nuclear Advanced Destruction System (NADS). This is an explosive device that you can build as you play the game. Saving your NADS for the bonus round makes for a very easy 100%, and a boat load of upgrades.
As the game progresses, your skill and your ship improves making the same old Martians easy prey. But the Martians introduce newer, more powerful units as you progress, keeping the game challenging.
It is this upgrading and constant struggle to get the upper hand against the Martians which makes this game addicting.
One piece of advice if you really want to enjoy this game, read the help pages. Also, be sure to play it with a friend as the co-op play is very fun.
Fun game, and worth every penny…