Motorherp Armada is an ambitious 3d take on a 2d game genre. Although the gameplay takes place in a 2d plane and thus remaining true to its roots, the camera is tilted back to give you a sense of perspective. The graphics are quite pretty with some nice particle effects and interesting additions such as fellow ships fighting their own battles off the sides giving you a sense of fighting in a larger war. The game mechanics essentialy revolve around staying alive as long as possible since this is the main contributor to your score which ticks up relentlessly and regardlessly. There's also a chaining system in place which fills up a power bar and grants your option with better firepower once its full. Unfortunately however the option itself is little more than a graphical effect and adds nothing to the gameplay. I feel that this was simply thrown in to satisfy the competition rules and the game hasn't been designed with option mechanics in mind. I do have qiute a big gripe with this game which is that despite the graphics being presented in 3d the gameplay itself is distresingly one dimensional. I feel that this game could be recreated as one of those lcd game and watches and not loose anything except the eye candy. Although you could move along 2 axes, the gameplay never required you to move any way other than left or right, in fact to move foward into the screen only served to put you at a dissadvantage. The available enemies, spawn patterns, and bullet spam is very limited, monotonous, and uninteresting. They simply fly towards you in straight line formations for the most part whilst firing in straight lines apparently in a futile attempt to win by clogging your cannons with wreackage. The game could be played quite successfuly by simply picking a line and sitting there with the fire button held down. Any enemies spawning in that line would be destroyed immediatly before getting any shots off, and any damage you did take would be quickly repaired by the stream of health replenishers floating towards you down your line of fire. If you did try to destroy all the enemies the gameplay reduced to simply tapping one direction to put you into a line of enemies to fire followed by tapping the opposite direction to avoid return fire. Fortunately this monotonous gameplay is broken up with some interesting boss battles, but unfortunately your quickly dumped back into the same repetative grind once the boss is killed since there is no variation between the levels. It was nice to see someone try and break with tradition but I think the way it was done destroyed much of the fun of shooters without adding anything extra which was worthwhile.
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Tim W Good game, great graphics. Screenshots can be deceiving though; the game is really a 2D shooter at heart with 3D graphics and models. Freedom of movement is limited to a flat plane, and dodging bullets is a futile exercise. As indicated by the shield gauge, you can expect to be hit numerous times. The online high score table earns this entry a couple of bonus points, and the number of levels plus bosses contributed to it's score as well.
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Charlie Armada is a bit of a unique entry in that it has a 3d perspective to it, albeit on that still restricts movement to a 2d plane. Think level 3 of Tempest. Along with the 3d perspective comes 3d graphics, with a number of detailed 3d ships flying towards you as well as a few larger boss style ships.
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Adigun This is BMF’s very first entry into this competition, and this game is fully entitled Divus Armada. For fans of Tempest, Tempest 2000, and/or the recent PC indie game Typhoon 2001, this is quite an excellent game in my opinion, and really richly worth the download and play!!! |