NovaStrike (PSN) Review
Posted by Mark Salmela on 06.12.2008
Oh boy, it’s another top down shooter. Sadly, Time Pilot this is not.
Now I’d like to start off this review by stating that I like top down shooters. Time Pilot is an awesome game that I recommend anyone with a 360 try out on XBLA. Now it’s pretty easy to see that much of NovaStrike’s design is based off of Time Pilot. NovaStrike is a top down shooter. But this is the perfect example of when trying to make an old-school design update to 3D actually hurts the game instead of help it. I’m currently trying to decide if the same thing applies to Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3. Any who that’s neither here nor there, let’s get more in depth with NovaStrike.
The first thing you will notice upon starting the game is the clad World War 2 style “female companion” much in the same design of the old promotional posters for the air force. While I like the design it still reeks of Time Pilot, and considering the game takes place in the distant future on another planet, it feels out of place here. Which brings me to my second point, what the hell is with the storyline? Now I know that old school arcade games do not need a storyline, but what the hell? I’d rather Tiki Games not make a storyline at all then whatever the hell NovaStrike is supposed to be. “A small contingency of the Draelus fleet has arrived on Praxor. We don’t know if they found out about the Scythe, but it’s only a matter of time now. Remember, the Scythe is a hybrid of Human and Draelus technology, and its overall capabilities are unknown.” If you understand what is going on in this game, by all means go ahead and enjoy it.
Hey look, if you pause the game you can almost see what’s going on.
Now that I am confused and angered and haven’t even started playing the game yet, it’s time to play the game. The first thing upon actually getting in control of your ship is how tiny your ship is. You’d think that you could zoom in or do something, but nope, your character is the size of a paper clip. It wouldn’t matter to me too much except for the fact that eventually the game fills up with so many enemies that you have no idea what’s going on. In a game like Time Pilot the number of enemies only increased gradually, while in NovaStrike it throws approximately 5 thousand enemies on screen, all shooting in random directions, while you struggle to comprehend everything that’s occurring on screen. There is simply too much going on, and while the game runs at 720p it doesn’t matter since everything is zoomed out and looks like a convoluted mess.
Putting the enemy difficulty aside *the later levels become nearly impossible*, your ship manages to have some of the worst and most inaccurate controls ever in a top down shooter. You control you ship with the left analog stick while shooting with the R2 and L2 triggers. Both guns have infinite ammo and are extremely loose. Trying to shoot enemies while moving is impossible, but it’s a must in the later levels because 95% of the screen is covered with enemy fire. And to make the shooting worse, every bomber in the game, although the same size as your ship *a pencil eraser* takes more firepower to blow up than a small country. Each bomber takes about 5 seconds of heavy machine fun fire in its ass to blow up, and it doesn’t help when there are 60 other enemies firing like a 3rd grader at me.
Come on kids, find Waldo!
While all of this is going on, a bunch of random text explaining to me how to play the game pops up about 6 minutes after I already mastered the controls on my own. If you don’t have an HDTV there’s no way you can read the text, it’s worse than Dead Rising. Hell, I’m sitting less than 3 feet from my HDTV and it’s bothersome to read.
Any who, onto the objectives. Unlike Time Pilot and any normal top down shooter where you blast through ways of enemies until a boss appears, NovaStrike took everything that sucks about shooters and made it the name of the game. In NovaStrike you usually have one of two objectives, protect your base or destroy the enemy’s base. Any mission where you protect your base is basically a glorified escort mission except for the fact that it doesn’t move. The protection missions consist of you flying for 30 seconds over the same repeating blue water until you reach your poorly constructed base while dozens of enemies fly over it dropping bombs on it. But thankfully, in true ass fashion, whether or not you actually protect your base doesn’t matter, because I’ve failed the majority of the protection missions yet it let’s me continue with the game anyways. Now destroying the enemies base is a little better, since basically you just blow everything you see up *you do have teammates occasionally, but they’re worthless*. To get to the enemies base you spent another minute and a half flying over to them, then make loops as you blow up everything on the ground while taking out approximately half of Earth’s population in fighter ships.
The one thing that is both good and necessary about NovaStrike is the regenerating health. Unlike most top-down shooters where one stray bullet kills you, NovaStrike gives you a regenerating shield. You also have a regenerating boost bar, but that goes right back into the useless category since it lasts for all of 1.5 seconds and takes about 5 seconds to recharge. The regenerating shield is a must, since you’ll constantly be hit by the random firing patterns of the enemy. I guess you could say it’s some of the best AI ever in a video game, since if I was the enemy and friendly fire was off and I had 3,000 ships I’d order all of us to fire randomly too. Luke Skywalker wouldn’t have shit on us.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’m not even on the screen.
Any who, with no multiplayer, and a pretty awful single player, there’s nothing to recommend about NovaStrike. There are a couple of things such as the tutorial mode *waste of time* that I didn’t cover, but honestly I’ve covered everything worth mentioning. The PSN and XBLA are all about core gameplay, which NovaStrike fails at miserably. While the PSN is rather lite on shooters compared to the XBLA, there’s no way I can recommend NovaStrike. At $10 NovaStrike is a joke, and will easily make it onto my list of worst PSN games ever. While it’s not as bad as Go! Sports Skydiving, stay away from NovaStrike, it’s terrible.
Graphics
4.0
While the game is in 720p and does not look too bad, the fact that everything is so panned out ruins the game. You can not see what is going on. And seeing is half the battle.
Gameplay
2.5
The controls are terrible and the gameplay is bad.
Sound
2.0
I honestly forgot if there was sound while writing this review. I wish I did not remember either, because it is annoying and awful.
Lasting Appeal
2.0
I played this game once, and I will never play it again.
Fun Factor
2.0
I had more fun writing this review than I did playing this game.
