Guxt
This took much longer than I originally expected, but here it goes:
Guxt
Nasty aliens attack, and the only way to stop them is to poke their eyes out.
Yet another game by Daisuke 'Pixel' Amaya, Guxt is something you wouldn't expect to come from the creator of the brilliant Cave Story and less brilliant Ikachan. Basically, Guxt is a simple vertical shoot 'em up without any plot whatsoever, instead packed-up on the action. And boy, is it hard. But I'll get to that later.
Guxt's gameplay is pretty straightforward. You fly your little rocket ship through stages, shoot the bad guys, collect powerups and fight bosses every once in a while. Arrow keys move the ship, Control shoots, Tab pauses and Esc gives you the familiar Continue/Reset/Exit menu. And you don't even have to settle down for that. Pixel even gives you the option to change the controls setup. So it should be a nice simple game, right?
WRONG! The first thing you notice upon starting a new game is that you are only given one extra life. Weird? Nah, it should be enough unless you fuck up big time. Then you find out hust how fragile your plane is. Get hit by one bullet, one enemy, and you're toast. Just avoid the enemies and their fire, right? Oh, the second stage has you flying through an asteroid belt or something, so you have to dodge asteroids, enemies, their bullets and also shoot back, at least if you want to score some points. And the big asteroids tend to fall apart if you shoot them a few times. And I forgot to mention that you'll quickly learn to not stay back at the lower edge of the screen, because enemies tend to approach from behind you as well without any sort of warning. At least the walls (which only appear in one stage only!) can't kill you. Unless, of course, you stand behind them and let them push you out of the screen. Or for that matter, if you simply get caught behind a corner. ARGH!
At least the game shows some mercy as well. Every 2000 points you get an extra life and picking up the Shield powerup allows you to get hit once or twice without dying. Too bad you can't get any Shields until the last stage, unless you know where to find them! Also, the Shields work in a very... amusing way: by picking up one Shield powerup, you get one extra hit point, second Shield gives you another one. However, if you pick up a third Shield, you lose your extra hit points and instead get a pair of white orbs that circle around you and destroy everything they touch, including enemy projectiles. Now that would be nice, if I didn't die after getting hit once! Now, to be honest, you can get another extra hit points by picking up more Shields, but getting four or more of these is rare.
Now I gotta admit that Guxt is not insanely hard, it's just really challenging, and with some practice you'll eventually breeze through all five stages with ease, which will unlock the Score Attack mode. This mode is just like the Standard game mode, except that you can register your high score here, and you get no extra lives. Just like in real life, die once and it's curtains for you. Oh, and did I mention the fact that you can only fight the true final boss in this mode? Have fun.
About the powerups. Apart from the Shield, which I talked about earlier, and Speed ones, they're all different weapons. You've got your standard double laser, minigun, double minigun and rear lasers, among other ones. My personal favorite is the Star, which you get in stage 4 and which fires in five different directions. Now, unlike in most other shmups, general enemies never drop powerups. Instead, they're carried by special enemies, which arrive at certain points in the game, or stored in scenery objects. And you're also awarded score points based on how quickly you can snatch the powerups after shooting whatever carried them. This leads into going dangerously near the carriers and shooting them at point blank, so that you can get full 100 points.
But the most important part of any shmup are its enemies, and Guxt is not disappointing in this regard. There are ordinary kamikaze ships, enemies that slip in, shoot at you and fly away, blocks that fly in a circle around you, the list goes on. The enemies are eye-themed - if it has an eye, shoot it. This goes double for the bosses, who not only have multiple eyeballs, but also, you guessed it, these eyeballs are their vulnerable parts. You might say this is dumb, but it's actually pretty clever, since, y'know, eyes are vulnerable and everything... Moving on.
The graphics are nice, stylish and evoke that nice retro feeling through its monochrome colouring. Pixel, like always, did a remarkable job. There are clouds running in the background, huge bosses exploding, enemies falling apart... Wait, what? Yes, that's right. Most enemies actually change their appearance according to how much damage they take. They get thinner, or lose their casings or whatever, but it's here and it shows what's possible to do with lo-res graphics.
Sounds are your average beeps, nothing really exceptional. Music, on the other hand, is truly outstanding, like always, and fits the game perfectly. There's main menu music, game over music, music for every stage, boss music, and it does exactly what it's supposed to, prepare you for the action. It's nice to listen to, and will make you keep playng, just to find out what is the music like in the next level.
I also must mention that the game itself saves replays of your run-throughs and stores them in the "play-records" folder. You can review these at any time simply by dragging the file onto the main menu screen, so you can look back at your games and see what you're doing wrong or simply brag to your friends that you roxxor their asses. This is, in my opinion, nice and useful feature, but it would be more convenient if there was a Replay option in the main menu. Just saying.
In the end, this game turned out to be not quite what it seemed to. It's short and hard, but good. Recommendation: Play only if you like a good challenge or dying. I rate it four popped eyeballs out of five. That's all, good night.
