Developer: Matt Edzenga
Publisher: Black Shell Media
Platform: PC, Android
Tested on: PC
BlastZone 2 – Review
Shoot-em-up’s will always be a popular genre for both young and old. That’s where BlastZone 2 comes in, it’s a horizontal shoot-em-up that features fast 2D gameplay, multiplayer, a lot of game modes and a whole lot of shooting aliens.
Story
BlastZone 2 revolves around saving the universe from an alien onslaught. There isn’t really any story indication whatsoever in-game, but it just gives you simple missions (in mission mode). Mission mode basically tells you that you have to take out some command ships to break the assault on the capital, after that you go to ground level to take out the alien strike team. After you accomplish that you’ll have to go into orbit and take out the high command which will then lead to the mothership. Once you’ve done all that, you decide to retaliate and take the fight to them and take out the alien hive that wanted to destroy you.
That’s pretty much everything there is to it. BlastZone 2 doesn’t really have a story but it’s more like a sequence of stages and bosses you go through in order to save the universe. Other game modes are also available but these contribute nothing at all story wise, but in such a small and retro-like game it would be weird to expect a full-blown story considering the genre it’s in.
Graphics
Graphics wise, the game looks pretty outdated but it might remind people of old games and make it nostalgic for them. Most of the time the game looks “okay” but at times it’s not that easy to look at, like when you go to the alien planet and sneak in through the clouds. The rest of the game looks fair and the player and enemy models are pretty nice and surprisingly detailed when compared to the scenery.
Performance wise the game runs well and doesn’t need a super good machine to run. It also features quite a bit of graphic options which is always good to see. You can edit resolution (yes it supports wide screens), cap frame rate, edit texture detail, antialiasing and much more.
Sound
Music and sound effects in BlastZone 2 are fairly good. The music is very adventurous and accompanies the game well, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of music or it just doesn’t loop well. Sometimes during a mission the music will have completely stopped by the time you make it to the end, resulting in a sound effect only boss battle (quite boring). When it comes to the sound effects, everything sounds rather basic and isn’t disturbing at all except for when there’s no music. When both music and sound effects are working it’s quite pleasant to listen to but the music can get quite repetitive at times.
Gameplay
BlastZone 2 is a horizontal shoot-em-up in heart and soul and it features fast paced gameplay with a good amount of content to explore. Controls are rather simple and can be reconfigured easily, it also supports gamepads which is always a plus.
The game features five different game modes for you to choose from. The first is “Mission” where you save the universe from an alien invasion. Here, the rules are quite basic: survive each area to reach the boss, anything that hits you reduces your health and you’ll have to defeat all 4 bosses in order to win.
In the second mode, Classic A, you’ll be sticking to the left side of the screen with only the ability to go up or down. Anything that reaches the far left side of the screen reduces your health and killing enemies in a chain without missing gives bonus points. Each wave has 40 enemies for you to kill, you basically win after 8 waves but you can keep playing after that.
The third mode is Classic B. This is pretty similar to Classic A except the weapons and points system. In Classic A, you unlock more weapons the further in the waves you get, however in Classic B you start with everything at your disposal but using special attacks costs points. Here you’ll have to find a close balance between points and offense if you want to get a high score.
Furthermore there’s Survival, which is basically the same as mission mode except there’s endless generated levels. Last but not least there’s Blitz, which gives you a fully powered ship from the beginning so you can rip through everything.
BlastZone 2 also features a big variety of ships you can choose from, each with their own stats and weapons. There are 7 ships you can choose from, each one has different points in Speed, Armor, Power, Refire and Charge. Each ship also has a standard and hyper loadout, the standard layout is, well, standard while the hyper layout is available when you activate hyper mode. The ships themselves look almost the same graphically and have the same shape. The only thing that is bothering is the hitbox of the ships from both you and the enemies. When you’re at a boss that creates a bullet hell, it’s sometimes frustrating to see yourself get hit when you’re clearly a good bit away from the bullet. Same goes for the enemies, mainly the bosses, they seem to have really weird hitboxes and hitting them in the wing will do nothing most of the time.
Every ship has a basic attack which is the attack you’ll be using the most, obviously. Then there’s the secondary attack which is a charged attack. This attack features multiple charge levels and does other things the more you hold it. Level one for instance can fire a high speed energy bolt, level two fires an energy beam and level 3 fires a huge energy beam and so on. The third attack is used to go into hyper mode, which can be activated when the bar is full. Hyper mode increases your attack speed greatly and gives you some new attacks, usually you can spam your level two charge and another unique attack in this mode, which is what makes it really good.
Furthermore if you like challenge and online play, it’s possible! The game features an online highscore system and multiplayer system. However, multiplayer can only be achieved through local co-op, entering someones IP (big nono!) or joining off of Steam friends. There are also multiple difficulty options which range from Training to Turbo.
Conclusion
BlastZone 2 is a welcomed addition to the shoot-em-up genre. It features a surprising amount of content for the price and is pretty fun to play. Furthermore, it has a wide range of difficulties for both newbies and veterans and even features online play. However, for difficulty the game mostly relies on enemy density rather than making a bullet hell, so keep that in mind if you only like those kind of shmups.
BlastZone 2 - Review,
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hello, this is Matt Edzenga, the developer of BlastZone 2. Thank you for the well thought out review of my game and I appreciate the criticisms as well.
Shortly after this review was posted, the bullet hitbox was adjusted to be much tighter to the player ship model. Also, the music cutting out mentioned in this review was in fact a bug and was corrected as well.