All Your Base: Titan Attacks!

All Your Base reviews games created by independent developers. A game with a score of 10 Bases is pretty much the OK Computer of video games.

Download (40 MB)
Developer: Puppy Games
Platform(s): PC, Mac, Linux
Genre: Shoot ‘em up (fixed shooter)
Price: $4.99 (roughly Rs. 245)

Titan Attacks! is a heart-felt tribute to retro shoot ‘em up games like Space Invaders and Galaga. Aliens attack from the top of the screen, you defend from the bottom and neither of you really know why any of this is going on. When you play Titan Attacks! you can really see the care that’s been put into reproducing and improving the game mechanics and overall feel of the older games. Some of their new game mechanics are really nice.

Sometimes, for example, after shooting down an alien ship, the pilot will manage to escape mid-air and try to parachute to the floor. If you catch it without killing it, you get some money which you can then spend on upgrades for your vehicle. If it escapes however, you get charged some money. Shooting it in mid-air has no consequences.

Another cool feature is ‘shields’. Instead of ‘lives’, ‘shields’ are destroyed every time you’re shot, but you keep playing until you are shot without shields. If you make it through a wave of enemies without losing a single shield, on the next wave you earn points with a x2 multiplier. The multiplier increases relative to the number of waves you’ve survived without losing a shield.

Pew pew pew! Lasers.

On top of this, the game just looks phenomenal. It’s yet another one of these games that look old and pixelated, but are actually incredibly pretty (see: Cave Story+, Bit Trip Runner, EDGE, Super Meat Boy and anything made by Puppy Games)

Unfortunately, much like the older shoot ‘em ups, Titan Attacks! eventually gets either boring or insanely hard. It becomes fun for a 10 or 20 minute run of explosions and neon colours whenever you have a spare moment, but any longer and it just gets repetitive and annoying. Still, it’s hardly an expensive game and is totally worth buying for the week of entertainment you can squeeze out of it.

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