Expand and contract.
I had the privilege of spending a bit of my time on Shoot 1UP DX. Which is, as you might guess, a shmup. And it reminded me, apropos of nothing, why I loved the genre as a kid, and that I’m really, really bad at them now.
The story is the usual fare for these types. Aliens invade, only ship(s) left, etc. You probably guessed it without my saying so.
And at the most basic level, you know what you’re getting into. This is, after all, a shmup. You’re going up, or occasionally a different direction, and shooting things.
The difference, however, is that Shoot 1UP DX has one thing a lot of these other games don’t have: a very specific gimmick. Rather than having the normal lives system, all of your lives are on the screen at the same time. You’re controlling every spare ship you have at once. Which means that there are benefits and drawbacks to how you’re playing.
For example, since you control the spread of your ships with the shoulder buttons, you have to decide what’s most beneficial at the time. By contracting your ships, you get the more traditional ship profile; small, easily dodge enemy bullets, the works. But spreading out has advantages. For one, you get a score multiplier by doing so based on tooltips (I’ve never really taken the risk to test it out the hard way). For another, you also get a big, fat stream of plasma blasts that deal way more damage than your regular shots. Indeed, there aren’t any bombs or traditional specials in the game, so this is the best way to do a lot of damage at once. But the more spread out your ships are, the more likely you are to crash them into something or get them shot down. So you have to be cognizant of the situation you’re in. That said, it’s almost like they knew you’d probably crash a bunch of these, so lives are a common enough drop. Just don’t be too cavalier with them.
There are also two paths through the levels, one easy, the other harder. You get plenty of time to make your choice, though.
For the most part, that’s really it. There are a few things that I took some minor exception too (there’s at least one boss that summons more ships, some of which restricting movement in such a way that you really can’t deal with them). But really, it’s absolutely up front with what it’s bringing to the table.
So I’d absolutely give Shoot 1UP DX a recommendation. It gives a unique take on the genre (at least, as far as I know), and it does everything you’d expect out of it really well. That may not sound like the highest praise, but I mean it as such.
Pro:
+ Classic shmup action
+ Interesting gimmick
+ Perfect level of challenge
Cons:
– Uh… sometimes managing your ships can get hectic?
Final Score:
*The publisher provided a copy for use in this review*
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