Review - Monday 1st January 2007 - 12:00am
When you first see Ixion, you would probably think it’s one of those elaborate clones of games like Xyanide and Alpha wing. And you would be right-to a certain extent. It’s a quite vibrant vertical shoot ‘em up, featuring a good number of levels and an easy control system. For some reason, though, it just doesn’t capture the feeling experienced when playing games like Xyanide. It’s too slow, I think.
The story is creative enough. An evil mutant empire threatens earth with invasion-they’ve already taken some military establishments, and their technology is too advanced for humans to comprehend. Enter project-X, who using ancient alien technology, have created a medley of human pilot and lifeless spaceship and called it Ixion-the pilot’s nervous system is connected to the ship’s controls. Mr. Ixion is required to destroy the mutant forces once and for all and thus save the day. Hooray.
The level and enemy design is quite nice. While Ixion itself dons a mild appearance (for a ship), the levels and enemies, especially the “mega-bosses”, are often imaginative. Graphics are quite polished, but can be grainy at times-animation is impressive, though. I enjoyed the sound the most; although there were no sound effects, the music was well composed and sounded a lot like digital chocolate’s catchy numbers.
The game features thirteen levels, set in several different locales, such as open space and inside huge mother ships, which in complete honesty do look suitably “old skool”. The objective is as simple as it gets: shoot everything, or die. Fair enough. The problem is you’re outnumbered about 64,000 to one. So, to help, you’ll find a few powerups scattered throughout the levels, which include air-to-ground missiles, machine gun upgrades and a little guardian angel thingy that flies above your ship. Aaaaah. Sounds a lot like Xyanide, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. Xyanide was a fast paced, playable-in-two-seconds shooter that would keep you entertained for hours on end. Ixion, however, is a good-looking, but annoyingly slow shooter that lives in the shadow of nostalgic gaming.
I wanted to like this game more than I do, I really did, but the pace simply kills the potential enjoyment which could have been experienced from this.
