tin_robot wrote:

Today I found myself with an unexpected afternoon off, and the desire to play something that wouldn’t require 80 hours of investment. Something quick, fun, and arcadey. So, on the back of a glowing Eurogamer review, I picked up Sword Ship. It’s pretty much exactly what I wanted. I’ll get the negative out of the way first - it’s quite expensive for what it is. It’s very much a pick up, blast, get a high score, try again sort of a game. The levels change, but not massively, and the gameplay remains pretty much the same throughout. Said gameplay has, however, been polished within an inch. So what is it? Basically a shmup without the shooting. A Mup? A dodgem up? I don’t know. Stuff appears, it shoots at you, and you can’t shoot back. Fortunately, the enemies in question are exceptionally stupid, and it’s pretty easy to get them to blow each other up, and therein lies the first bit of genius. So you move around the screen, desperately lining up enemy shots, whilst trying to dodge them yourself. You get points every time you pull off one of these “tricks”. You get bonus points for doing so at the last minute, or taking out multiple enemies at once and so on. Visuals are simple, colourful, with enemies and attacks (for the most part) nicely sign posted. There is also a weirdly satisfying “dive” animation when you briefly take your ship underwater to dodge attacks. If dodging bullets and lasers wasn’t enough, there’s also the small issue of collecting cargo. What little plot there is, has you racing your ship across the surface of the sea of a flooded future world stealing cargo from the rich to give to the poor. In practice what this means is you need to grab cargo every level, and safely dispatch it where you can cash it in at the end of the level. This is where the second Very Good Idea comes in. At the end of each level you can cash in each bit of cargo for a massive points bonus. However, you can instead choose to convert some of them into extra lives instead (you have none by default). Thus the risk/reward mechanic that’s there in the main gameplay, works its way into the score/ lives system too. Lives may seem the obvious choice if, like me, you’re not that excited about high scores - but new elements unlock at different high score levels, making the decision all the more tantalising. (These elements may be new upgrades, new ships, new weather conditions or even new difficulty levels. It sums up how poor I am at the game that I’ve only just unlocked “normal” difficulty. You can choose to carry on at “beginner” level if you wish, but on “normal” there’s an extra one of those precious crates in every level, and thus potential for higher scores still, and so the cycle starts up again…) Suffice to say, for such a simple game, I’ve been playing for a remarkable amount of time this evening, and can see it being my game of choice for a quick bit arcade fun for quite some time.