But aside from a couple of one-off models that were used sparingly, there wasn’t much else to fight against.Ĭurved Space’s boss characters suffered from a similar monotony. Sure, the interstellar spider came in a couple of different forms and sizes. It felt like the enemies were damn-near exclusively of the space arachnid variety. Though Curved Space had quite a few options on the arsenal side of things, the same cannot be said for a majority of the remaining design. With the sticks under my thumbs, I found that it felt very reminiscent of the previously mentioned Super Stardust HD, leaving me legitimately entranced for the better part of an hour. It legitimately took me five minutes of futzing with the sensitivity, only for me to give up and plug in a controller. Just don’t try to use the PC control scheme. The fluid twin-stick action is on full display and it impresses. The planet can then leech their energy to replenish itself.Īn aspect of the design where Curved Space legitimately excels is the moment-to-moment combat. Lastly, a common mission objective is to chain the opposition to posts sticking out of the ground. Another use would be latching on to certain enemies to leech energy from their ship to power yours. If you manage to kill a single member of a chained set of enemies, it will create a cascading effect that harms or dispatches everyone in the chain. In some scenarios, you can use the tether to chain a series of enemies together. When you’re not trying to blast adversaries back to the stone age, you can also use a tether to perform a series of different tasks. I mean, there’s a whip cracking attack like you’re the Indian Jones of slaughtering space spiders! Alongside standard blasters, shotguns, rockets, and lasers, there are a few other treats that I don’t want to spoil. If you can think of a weapon, Curved Space likely has some permutation of it. The one area where the design team didn’t skimp on was the vast armory at your disposal. Speaking of death, you will be dealing it… a lot. The amount of explorable space on each station or planet is limited, as they’re usually designed to loop around on themselves like a super deadly Mobius strip of explosions. The ship you pilot throughout the campaign is also anchored Super Mario Galaxy-style to each stage’s surface. Utilizing an anchored over-the-shoulder third-person camera, you’re extremely close to the action. The action itself plays out on a series of different heavenly bodies. Eventually, there are a couple of legitimate forks in the narrative, but it felt like the gameplay never really changed in any substantial way. It ultimately was only the illusion of choice, when in reality the overlap between paths is pretty damn similar. The issue is, under most scenarios, you still end up needing to complete all of the available options anyway. Throughout the campaign, you have the chance to make decisions about supposed branching paths in the narrative. It doesn’t take long to realize that your newly materialized compatriots have very different motivations for jumping dimensions. Although you have your own shit to worry about, you end up lending these hapless schmucks a hand. The doppelgangers appear to be parallel universe versions of yourself. Having a facsimile of yourself sneak up on you may sound unrealistic, but let’s not lose track of the fact that you’re also flying a futuristic spaceship. At some point, after you complete the initial set of tutorial stages, your ship is ambushed by two of, well… you. You play the role of pilot, performing some ill-defined mission, in a relatively unoccupied location in space. I’ll wait… With that in mind, Curved Space seemed almost predestined for interstellar combat. Try to think of a twin-stick shooter that isn’t futuristic or firmly entrenched in the science fiction genre. Following in the familiar footsteps of Super Stardust HD, the newly released Curved Space looks to finally shave off a slice of the arcade gaming pie. If you look back through the annals of arcade-centric shooters, I feel as though there are two distinct eras: “Before Geometry Wars” and “After Geometry Wars.” The title helped put the twin-stick shooter back on the map for console fans and kicked off a renaissance of neon-hued shenanigans that continues to this day.
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