[Mechanical R]

New Japanese shooter fires blanks


This game has Japanese shooter written all over it. As good as Japan are for making games, sadly this doesn’t seem to be one of their stronger endeavors.

Your mission is…well its kind of hard to tell. With the text in the part of the game that I can only assume was the story sequence the text was so small I couldn’t even read it, not the greatest of starts ill admit. So, let’s crack on with the gameplay.

You pick your character 1 of 2; the only real difference is the look of the character and their attack. It’s either a straight line firing primary with a huge explosive secondary, or a more spread out firing weapon with a more concentrated blast for your special attack.

You shoot your way through 5 rather short stages making your way through fields of enemies, trying to avoid each and every attack they fire back at you to reach a boss, which tends to be more of the same. Hold shoot and pray you don’t get boxed in by their attacks.

The default difficulty is set to normal, now this means that all the attacks thrown at you are only avoid able if you move past them. Sometimes, this is virtually impossible yet the main idea is to get through the game without having to use a continue. Though the continues are infinite, it seems strange as to how people can manage.

Its not all lost however, to some people, it may seem more of a challenge to reach the higher scores without losing all your lives. Though I really can’t add much life to it, unless you’re the stubborn type and want those points.

The game doesn’t have the most pretty of looks when you play. With a mixture of anime drawings and far from next get graphics, if you’re looking for one of those bright and good looking shooters. This fails to make the grade.

With a low volume theme and just the drone of shooting to be heard, you may want to exercise your 360’s CD ripping capabilities and listen to some tunes you’d prefer. The audio doesn’t play a key role if any into the game, so you won’t be testing out your surround sound much with this.

Unless you find this kind of scrolling shoot entertaining, you wont find much fun to be had with Triggerheart. Those who do enjoy it, can only see themselves enduring the same 5 stages over and over again trying to beat high scores and playing through the game to get achievements which are a feat in themselves mainly revolving around not dying once or using certain weaponry. Not the easiest of achievements to get.

Sadly, though with an interesting and luring name, the game has little to offer to you for entertainment. Only fans of this kind of genre, will be tempted at most, and unless your are interested. Save those Microsoft Points.

Rating: 4.6

Published by: Warashi
Developed by: Warashi
Genre: Shooter
Number of Players: 1
Features: Memory Unit, Custom Soundtrack

For a full achievement list click here