No Gravity PSP

[MonkeyWrench]

With the recent talk of sci-fi shooters/space-sims on the last podcast I was left lamenting the decline of a much loved genre. However, yesterday I logged on to PSN and was presented with a banner for a game called No Gravity. My first thought it was just going to be another twin-stick shooter, but I was curious, so I asked the internets and to my surprise it was a space shooter. If I didn't have such a void in my life for that type of game I probably wouldn't have picked it up, but I slapped down some virtual sterling and downloaded it.

I played through the first few missions last night and it's not bad. Reminds me a lot of Blast Radius by Psygnosis, a pure no-frills arcade shooter. I would have preferred something with a little more depth, maybe a bit of space trading, but as it stands it's an enjoyable little shooter.

The description of it from the developers site is unintentially funny:

For the PlayStation Portable system, "No Gravity - The Plague Of Mind" is a 3D space shooter which allows you to control a spaceship from the first-person or third-person perspective. Your job is to accomplish missions, with diverse objectives ranging from destroying enemy ships or bases, escorting allied ships, raiding ground bases, clearing mine fields, etc.

A space shooter in which you fly a spaceship?!

There's a trailer for it here:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37713.html

Edited March 8, 2009 by MonkeyWrench

[brkl]

The Plaaaaaaaaaague of Miiiiiiiiiind.

Sounds like a game I wouldn't like. Not saying it's bad.

[Wrestlevania]

I played this for about half an hour last night myself and, apart from the ridiculous premise and the poor English, it seems entertaining if very, very easy.

The graphics are impressive and the controls are simple and direct. But there are a couple of annoying oversights in my opinion:

1. It seems like a lot of the game is being procedurally generated, not unlike Elite. Unfortunately, that's where the similarities with Elite end. But I think this had the potential to be a portable version of that classic game. Instead it comes off as a minimalist, public domain / shareware version of Microsoft's Freelancer.
   
2. There's no apparent scoring whilst in-level, you just get a summary at the end. It could've been an interesting and addictive time-/score-attack game were this displayed as you play.
   
3. For some unknown reason, the ship's boost lasts for a predetermined length of time. Instead of just holding down the boost button for as long as you need, it fires for a predetermined length of time instead. Meaning you can completely overshoot your intended destination. And there's no way of cancelling the boost once you've activated it either.
   

[MonkeyWrench]

Funny you should say it comes across as shareware as it was originally a freeware PC/Mac game.

Good points. Another thing that is a bit of a pain is when you boost the colours over saturate and it completely obscures your targetting reticule.

[Wrestlevania]

Played it a bit more and quickly got pissed off with the very poor wingman AI; they kept shooting me out of the sky whilst clumsily trying to hit nearby enemy targets.

Disappointing.