Xbox Indie Review: Revolver360

Remember to blink. As the thick electronic beats assaulted my eardrums and colorful, constantly changing images of outer space and neon prisms bombarded my eyes, I just had to keep reminding myself to blink.

Underneath the trippy pizazz is a side-scrolling shooter with the rather unique twist of allowing you to, well, twist the screen. It took me a little while to wrap my head around the mechanic, but basically as the ship flies from left-to-right, you can adjust the axis that it’s flying on. Basically, that means that when there is a vertical column of bullets bearing down on your ship, you can rotate the screen 90 degrees so the column is now an easy-to-avoid horizontal row.

Aside the rather unique mechanic, Revolver is really defined by its visual style. Stills do little to capture how gorgeous this game is in motion. One second you’re flying through a neon green city, the next you’re in the middle of the sun and the next you’re cruising past Earth, while the music frantically blares in the background. It’s almost hard to really even appreciate the spectacular vistas since it’s not a wise idea to take your eyes of your ship for a single second.

Although there are two modes, the Infinite Range mode was by far the more compelling. This mode plays much like a standard shooter where you withstand waves of enemies while trying not to die. Other wave-based games tend to feel extremely repetitive because you typically fight in some stagnant arena; Revolver360 solves this problem by using an array of different gorgeous backdrops that change every few seconds. It’s like you’re always moving into a new level with only a brief pause to let you catch your breath.

I really liked how the game feels totally relentless and absolutely bombards your senses with stimulation. Projectiles and enemies attack from all direction with little respite, which means you have little time to blink admist the frenzied chaos. As spectacular as they are, the visuals can occasionally be a bit distracting. Enemy projectiles have the nasty habit of blending in with backgrounds, which can make it a bit difficult to even see when you’re getting hit at times.

The Short Range mode grants you unlimited health to run through a truncated level and maximize your score, and high scores are stored on a central server. The prospect of replaying the same two-minute segment of a game in order to perfect a high score isn’t terribly thrilling for me, so this mode really isn’t very appealing. Perfectionists and dedicated shmup fans might find something addicting there though.

As interesting as the gameplay mecahnic may be, I’m not sure that the game built around it is really structured enough for my liking. The Infinite Range mode is fun for awhile, but the rapid-fire random levels didn’t really have the hook of structured well-paced traditional levels. Prismatic Solid may be a bit tame by comparison, but it’s structure and level design gives it an edge over this interesting experiment. Still, anyone with a passing interest in shooters or fans of outrageous visuals should check this out.

Rating:

Visit the Xbox Marketplace to add a free demo of Revolver 360 to your Xbox 360 download queue.

Revolver 360 was purchased for 240 MS points ($3).

By Mike Wall at January 16, 2011.

About Mike Wall

Mike grew up and lives near Philadelphia and has been intrigued with games ever since his parents preached that they rotted his brain. He studied journalism at Penn State and got his master's degree in secondary education before realizing that not even summers off would make that job palatable. He now works in marketing and is trying to find time to continue writing a book about zombies, aliens, vampires, the end of the world, and a talking cat.