|
| Earth Day by eSoft Interactive |
|
Earth Day is not an environmental activists' sim, nor is it an interactive Al Gore presentation. It is, however, your chance to try and save the earth from alien invaders, courtesy of eSoft Interactive. All I can say is, "thanks for the opportunity!"
As stated above, the basic premise behind Earth Day is that the Earth is about to be invaded, and it's up to you to hold back the invasion for as long as you can. To aid you in this effort, you are given control of the Earth, which resides squarely in the middle of the screen. You initially have one cannon - and can ultimately have up to four - which you use to blow away the attackers. To reach the enemies, who are coming at you from all sides, you can use two definable buttons to rotate the earth clockwise and counterclockwise. If that were all that you had at your disposal, however, the game would be over in short order. Thankfully, you have a few tricks up your sleeve in your mission to protect the world.
You start the game out with 3 weapon points, and throughout the game you can collect more. These points allow you to upgrade five areas of your offense and defense. Rotation is how quickly your planet spins. Shield is used to bolster your defense, but is only good in conjunction with health packs. Firepower is how much damage your cannons can do. Clones allow you to add up to 3 cannons to the one you start with. Finally, Rapid Fire determines the speed with which your cannons shoot. It is up to you to determine what combination of these works for your fighting skill. Of course, if you can last long enough you'll probably end up maxed out in all of them, but this is a tough thing to do. The nice thing about this system is that no decision is permanent. If you place all your points into Rapid Fire when you start, then decide after a while of not getting additional points that you want to increase your rotation speed, just enter the armory, remove a point from Rapid Fire, and add it to Rotation. For me this weapons system was one of the highlights of the game.
| |
Weapon points are one of the five power-ups that are available in the game. In addition, the Freeze Bomb will put a temporary chill on the crowd to let you blast away without enemy advancement. As mentioned before, you can collect Health Packs once you have at least one level of Shield, and each combination of Shield Level / Health Pack allows you one extra hit before you die. Weapon points help you enhance your skills. You start out the game with one Smart Bomb, and can collect more through power-ups. Smart Bombs will clear the screen of all attackers. Finally, you can collect parts to the BFL. Once you have three parts the BFL will be active for 15 seconds. For those of you familiar with FPS games, you probably have an idea what BFL is. For the rest, you'll just need to read the help! Power-ups are distributed through satellites that appear on the board every 15 seconds. You must first destroy the satellite, which usually isn't a big deal, and then hit the power-up itself. This tends to be a bit more problematic, and it really my main gripe with the game. Destroying satellites at the top or bottom of the screen can sometimes leave the power-up behind the HUD so you can't see it. No matter where the power-ups fall they are small, and there were times where it seemed like I was pointed right at a power-up and still couldn't hit it. Finally, once you've destroyed the satellite, enough enemies can keep filling up that space that you can't actually shoot the power-up before it disappears. Of course, these power-ups are essential to the game, so if possible, get them.
So how about the enemies themselves? There are definitely plenty of them. Every couple of minutes a new one is introduced, and of course the farther into the game you go the more it takes to kill the new enemies. This makes either rapid fire or firepower - and probably eventually both - quite necessary. But, that's also the joy of the game. Eventually all of these bad guys will overwhelm you, it's just a matter of how long it takes before that happens.
The visuals in Earth Day are very nice. There's nothing overly special about the ship design, but everything is nicely rendered and fits with the look of the game. The interface is sharp, the background looks good, and effects such as explosions and the BFL are pretty cool. I think my favorite part of the visuals, however, is how the Earth changes as the game progresses. When you start out it looks just as a planet should, be as time passes the planet begins to morph into a techno-world. Eventually it starts looking very sleek, and this was a very nice touch to incorporate into the game.
| |
The sound effects are spot on. I can't say that one particular sound makes an impact, but it all fits with the mood of the game. The background music is nice, but it would have been better if the tune changed throughout the course of the game.
Because there are no missions and the action comes to you rather than you going to the action, Earth Day is probably not going to appeal to all users. While I still prefer the scrolling shooter genre, I found this game to be among the best of its genre, and it definitely has me addicted. A great presentation, fast and furious action, and a nicely tuned weapons system will make Earth Day a hard habit for you to break. Now excuse me while I go play some more…
Overall Score: 8/10
|
|
|
