From: Zach Keene Subject: Zach's Shooter Reviews - Demonstar v3.2 [Windows 9x] Date: 1999/11/12 Message-ID: <382CFB65.D7082913@bellsouth.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en,de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news1.atl 942472020 209.214.52.204 (Sat, 13 Nov 1999 00:47:00 EST) Organization: Feisar is Fair? MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 00:47:00 EST Newsgroups: alt.games.video.shooters You've really got to hand it to the folks at Mountain King Studios. They've been around for the better part of a decade, released three games, all of them shooters, in a time where "shooter" + "PC" = "FPS". :) So, let's take a look at their most recent offering. (Editor's Note: Since this review went to press, the author has learned that MKS has released two more games and announced another, most of which aren't shooters. Despite that, the author of this review is downloading as we speak. :) STORY: "When Aliens Attack", part MMMCMLXLVIII. The Xidus Armada returns from "Galactix", an early MKS offering, and you must fly the experimental Raid... erm, I mean RaptorX prototype to destroy the threat. PLAYERS: 2 players can fly it simultaneously, either physically in the same room or over a LAN, modem connection, ICQ, or MSN Gaming Zone. GAMEPLAY: At first glance, this almost seems to be a Raiden clone. Your ship starts with the usual pea-shooter. Unlike Raiden though, you always keep this pea-shooter, even add some other weapon like a laser. Anyway, from time to time a large ship will roam about the top of the screen, and drop a power-up when it's destroyed. Said power-up changes colour over time... sound familiar? Your main weapon choices are the usual vulcan cannon (wide spread; low power) and laser (low spread, high power). Demonstar also has a Plasma Cannon, which is just a rapid-fire cannon, and the Megaton Pulse, which is a homing weapon availiable only in the registered version. Also, you can pick up Missiles in both the regular and homing varities. Unlike Raiden, the homing missiles aren't weak compared to the regulars. Too bad that the missiles only last a limited time in Demonstar... And, as you may have guessed, you get your standard Raiden bombs, in both the Cluster and Big Bang varities. Yes, there are Medals too. So what's different? You can only power up the main weapons 6 times, and if you switch, you start back at level 1 of whatever you switched to. Ugh. But, if you pick up an unnecessary power-up (i.e., a seventh weapon power-up) instead of getting a wimpy point bonus, you unleash an explosion of pellets that cause major damage to anything they touch. The number and scatter pattern of these pellets depend on what weapon you have equipped, but its always useful. You can also pick up side and rear cannons in addition to your other weapons. These can come in handy sometimes. Also, you have a shield, but quite frankly most attacks other than peon ship pea-shots do so much damage that you can practically ignore it. DEATH PENALTY: Like Raiden; you lose everything, although you'll be able to reclaim a few of your power-ups. CHALLENGE: For once, the difficulty ratings are actually pretty accurate, although I wouldn't call this one of the most difficult games around. As I don't have many issues with the game balance, I'll use this space to point out a few odd quirks that I didn't much care for. The first one is the loss of power when you switch weapons, as I noted above. The second is the fact that what you've already killed _can_ kill you. Running into the remnants of larger ships/bosses before they completely blow up is fatal. While this is arguably more realistic than most games, it'll probably take some getting used to. Third, the fact that bosses take forever to kill combined with the fact that most of them have very simple, easy to avoid attack patterns can make for some boring boss battles. GRAPHICS: Maybe not the most phenomenal graphics you've ever seen in a game, but well done nonetheless. The explosions for the most part don't send debris clear accross the screen in twenty directions, something that bugged me about Raiden 2. The backgrounds can tend to be a bit repetitive, though. Be on the lookout a few old "friends" from previous MKS games, BTW. Heh. MUSIC: Standard MKS fare, really. Not bad at all, but it's no Dar.. well, you've heard me say that one too many times already. :) CONTROL: Well, you've got a few options. Of course there's the keyboard, but I don't recommend that at all. You can also use the mouse IIRC, but I've never played with that too much. What I have used is the Gravis Gamepad Pro, which although resembling a PSX pad is actually a so-so product, with a D-pad that is less than accurate at times. That said, I've had no trouble using it to play Demonstar, which probably says alot for Demonstar's control. :) EXTRAS: Registered users can access the Mapmaker mode to make their own levels/graphics/music/sound. Unfortuantely, the already limited documentation seems to have disappeared completely from MKS's website, and this bugger isn't very intuitive. Quite a shame, really. Despite that, however, a few folks have managed to put together some custom levels, which can be downloaded at the MKS site. OVERALL: 8/10. Overall a solid game. I don't think it can quite fill the shoes of Raiden, but it's probably as close as you're going to get on a PC (excluding the PC ports of the Raiden series, of course. :) At $12.95 it's a pretty good deal, too, and if there's a company that deserves it, it's MKS. Their recent retooling of Raptor to work on newer Windows systems has not gone unnoticed, and while I hope other once epic (pun intended) shareware companies follow suit I'm not going to hold my breath. SOUNDS GOOD, WHERE DO I GET IT: The MKS Website - www.mking.com A SECOND OPINION: Fadedstar X posted a review of this game here sometime around April 20 that might be worth searching Deja.com for if you're interested. Zach Keene ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Author of many FAQs: MK2, FF1, Einhander, CSOTN, AGVS, G3, and G.Darius ftp://members.aol.com/fnlfanatic/arcanelore/ Shooter fans: Visit the new alt.games.video.shooters today! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "The freedom we lost cannot be re-conquered cheaply, but however high, it's a price worth paying." - Robert Miles -----------------------------------------------------------------------