Revolution Ace is a top down Shmup in where you fight enemies from both the air and the ground simultaneously. There are two keys that fires your weapons. One is to aim your projectiles in front of you and the other to fire at the ground below you. It can be confusing to tell on what plane an enemy is on and I would often times find myself shooting over an enemy. After a bit of practice and knowledge of the enemy it becomes a non-issue. Before getting to the gameplay you may want to tweak around with the graphic settings but be warned, turning on CSAA anti-aliasing will immediately crash the game for some reason. There are four modes in this title. Campaign provides a story and unlocks more levels for the other modes, Skirmish is to replay any mission you want and even some exclusive ones and versus has you and another player going through the same mission competing for score while introducing some new power-ups that hinders your opponent.
The last mode is called BattleChain that works similarly to versus though you play alone and later send the ghost data of your playthrough to the person you challenge. Campaign mode is where you’ll want to start as it does it’s best to introduce you to the mechanics of this game. The story of Revolution Ace has an interesting beginning in which the nations of the world built machines to fight their wars instead of wasting any human lives and the robots eventually stop fighting each other to launch a devastating attack against humanity. It has a very interesting premise but goes nowhere as they went for the “funny redneck” vaguely explains what you are doing on each mission route. No one expects a story from a Shmup though it did feel rather disappointing to start off with one and promptly forget about it. Throughout every mission you will be facing a horde of hostile robots in your cheap cobbled together jet in a last ditch attempt to retaliate against the enemy. It starts off as a suicide mission though after many successes you start gathering scrap that allows you to build much better equipment on your craft.
The more enemies you destroy the more scrap you collect once successfully completing a mission. You get much more scrap if you kill an enemy before it leaves the screen. If it leaves and comes back for a second barrage it will be worth far less. Scrap will be the most important thing in this game since Revolution Ace features RPG like progression in where newer unlocked weapons you can buy in the armory are better in every way compared to your meager starting equipment. You also level up by gaining experience and unlike scraps you still get experience even if you fail the mission. Leveling up sometimes means that you get to choose from one of many perks that increase damage for a certain weapon type, allows your shields to recharge faster and one that increases your overall health to name a few. Sometimes instead of being able to choose from perks while leveling up you will instead have new equipment available to buy in the Armory. You will be needing all the help you can get as this game is brutal and I barely managed to beat it even while playing through the entire game with someone else.
This would be a good time to mention the online multiplayer. It is great and I couldn’t notice any lag or hiccups during 6 or so hours of playtime on two very poor internet connections. I wish more shumps would include online play as most have the option for two players but many of us can’t take advantage of it. Funny that a 2 dollar game should include it and it’s a feature I must applaud. This is one of the most graphically impressive shmups on the market as it runs on Unreal Engine 3 and features cool effects such as the water rippling when shot at as well as fancy explosions. It is a very nice looking game but there is nothing interesting to look at as most of the game is either in a bland desert, the sky or over water. Enemy designs are decent though this is where the game suffers the most due to the RPG system of this game. From start to finish the enemies felt very bullet spongy making the combat feel unsatisfying and utterly devoid of any flow as you spend way too much time on a single enemy while there are dozens more coming for you.
That makes it feel like a game designed around grinding instead of skill. It is possible to beat the game without any grinding, however bullet spongy enemies make it tedious task. Leveling up also unlocks weapon slots for your ship allowing you to place a few more guns on the side of it to shoot horizontally. You unlock the left weapon slot first and it takes quite a while to unlock the one on the right side making it feel like very artificial progression. We are the last hope to destroy the robot menace and the mechanic won’t install another gun on your preferred side of the ship because we are not level 18? The RPG features of this game aren’t subjectively bad as those that like the feeling of becoming more powerful and being able to take on more difficult tasks are sure to enjoy it but for those of us that prefer Shmups to have everything we need to stand a chance from the get go and skill being the determining factor in whether we are victorious or a pile of debris on the floor.
Weapons variants range from bullets, lasers and explosives. Each unlocked weapon has different effects even if they are the same variant so make sure to carefully read the description as some weapons can’t be shoot at ground enemies. Fighting ground enemies is kind of clunky as you have some type of auto lock feature while shooting at the ground so you may fire at the wrong target from time to time. It is very cool seeing a buggy riding around down in a desert shooting up at you and those add some strategy to game as you decide whether to fight the enemies in front of you or the ones below you. The projectiles on screen are shot by the dozens and is near bullet hell levels of crazy. Unlike Bullet Hells your ship’s hitbox is pretty huge here and you can take quite a bit of punishment before meeting your demise. You have both a shield and hull health to protect you from exploding. It doesn’t matter much if the shield takes damage as not firing your weapons will recharge its energy back, hull health on the other hand you do not want to take any damage to . The only way to heal hull health is via a semi-rare power-up that enemies drop and if your shields are completely down that means things have gone really wrong.
Shields can also be bought and replaced with different types such as ones that take more damage but recharge slower. The whole not shooting to recharge your shields gimmick is rather weird and will more often than not cause you to get overwhelmed as more enemies enter the fray. It makes for some rather intense moments where you have a split second to decide if you stop firing and try to hold out until some of your shield is recharged or to hold your ground and risk it all. These moments would be a lot more fun if the enemies weren’t so bullet spongy and you could go out in a blaze of glory though there is no denying it will still have you on the edge of your seat. One complaint I have regarding projectiles is that some enemies shoot dark brown projectiles that are really hard to see in most cases. There is also this weird gimmick in where your ship randomly rises higher to the sky or lower in certain set points of the level. At times this will also cause your screen to rotate needlessly causing you to lose your vantage point where the enemy has an opening in its projectile formation. Bosses are giant enemies be they fortresses or battleships that will do everything it can to shoot you down. It is rather cool seeing them get desperate as their health is low and launching an all-out barrage of projectiles. In the end of the day this is a content packed shmup with online coop, some levels in Skrimish mode that randomly generate the game and many handmade missions to blast your way through. It is by no means a game that will take the world by storm but for its low price this is a game that any fan of the Shmup genre should at the very least consider taking a look at.
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