Titan Attacks! Review for PS Vita PS4 and PS3

sciteach

Developer Curve Studios mashes classic Space Invaders gaming with upgrades and frantic boss battles. Is it worth your money?

One of my first console gaming experiences was Space Armada on my old Intellivision. I loved it. Space enemies marching across the screen and dropping a level closer to invasion with a pew pew or two thrown in. Newer, faster enemies appeared as levels progressed, with a variety of weapons blasting at you. You're going to find the gameplay pretty similar to this old school game in Titan Attacks!

Pixel rich graphics with classic gameplay. A blast from the past
But is this a good thing? At first when you start out on Earth with no upgrades it really feels sluggish. Quickly, though, you earn cash for dropping enemy ships, capturing aliens as they fall from a ship, and getting "skill shots" for popping dropping out of control targets... and you get to upgrade your tank a little at a time. There are also temporary upgrades like shields or super weapons (basically a rapid fire bonus).
Here is your upgrade screen in between battles. The bottom two are "add ons" and "recharge." Add ons give you different blasters, while I still have no idea what recharge is for. It sure is expensive, though. 
To mix up the standard Invaders gameplay, there are challenge stages, which involve saucers flying randomly across the screen and you have to pick them off to earn bonuses, like cash or shields, or Smart Bombs. Basically those are last ditch effort explosive devices. 
Earth Level Mother Ship!
Each "world" you play on is made up of a bunch of waves and then the final battle culminates with a showdown with the mother ship. Get all your shields down to zero and you die on the mother ship? You go all the way back to the beginning of the stage. Yes, you can save the game, but as far as I can tell, it is a "save and quit" function and you can only load it up once from that point. 


Luckily, though, when you complete a world, next time you play you can start at the new world with a few upgrades to the tank built in. The real trick to getting to the top of the leaderboards, though, is to string your combo meter up and rack up points. 

Sounds and graphics
This is a cross buy title for the PS4, PS3, and PS Vita. Is this a quality PS4 game? For a next gen console, this is a decidedly not gen title. Happily you buy it once and it's out on all three consoles. And for $12 you might be wondering if it is worth your cash. The graphics are fun, but nothing as flashy as Resogun (a hi def Defender upgrade). The sounds are pew pew and the soundtrack is definitely retro. $12? It feels like an awful lot for this type of game. 

Verdict: 
6.5/10
A challenging but not very engrossing retro game. It's got guns and ships... but it feels more like a "mobile" game than anything next gen. 

You might like this game if: 
  • you like a mix of retro with your space shooters
  •  you have all three PS consoles.. the cross buy is nice in this respect
You might not like: 
  • the dated graphics and retro feel
  • the price! $12 seems like a lot for this title
What do you think? Are you a big enough fan of old school games to pick this up?

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