Asteroids Deluxe - Review

Centipede, the kickoff Game Room title for Windows Phone, impressed many with its true-blue arcade emulation and stellar presentation. Asteroids Deluxe is the second portable Game Room entry. It'southward still a very faithful port (possibly even more than so than the panel/PC version), only the game itself is more than of an acquired taste.

Asteroids Palatial is the 1981 arcade sequel to the original Asteroids. Players pilot a ship through an asteroid field, blasting space debris for points. In one case a large asteroid is fired upon, it breaks into two smaller ones. Each of those splits into 2 actually tiny, hard-to-hitting rocks. Clear a wave of all asteroids and a new moving ridge starts upward with fifty-fifty more than rocks to avert and destroy.

Wing past the interruption and into hyperspace for our full review.

Unfriendly aliens

Stellar debris isn't the but thing players take to deal with. Large and small-scale UFOs pop upwards adequately frequently, randomly firing effectually the screen. Their shots not only impale you lot, they as well dissever upward asteroids, making the chaos a lot harder to manage. Deluxe adds a new enemy to the Asteroids formula: killer satellites. These triangular ships dwelling in on the actor and split into two smaller ships when hit, much similar asteroids. I hear they likewise type in all caps even though they know information technology's the same as yelling, the jerks.

Gameplay and controls

Players are not granted much of an arsenal to deal with all those threats. Two buttons on the left side of the screen turn the ship left or right. On the right side are three action buttons: burn, thrust, and shield. The thespian's shots are pretty tiny and information technology can take a lot of turning to line them up.

You dodge by thrusting around the screen. I suppose a thrust push button worked well enough dorsum in '81, but gamers these days (myself included) are probably spoiled by convenient twin-stick shooters like Geometry Wars.

The shield is some other style of defending your ship. It lasts most twelve seconds per life. In the heat of battle, I rarely remembered to accept my finger off of fire or thrust to shield myself. Like thrusting with a button, taking one'southward finger off of fire in order to activate shields doesn't feel very natural.

Graphics

Games didn't have fancy-shmancy polygonal graphics in 1981, but savvy developers used the next best thing: vector graphics. Everything in the Asteroids Deluxe arcade game, from the player's ship and enemies to Game Over and score indicators, is composed of lines rather than pixels. Thus the spacecraft and asteroids spin and rotate quite naturally. Mitigating the wow gene somewhat, vector displays of the time could only suit a unmarried color.

The original Asteroids had white graphics on a black groundwork, while a tinted overlay produced slightly prettier blueish graphics in Deluxe. The sequel'southward illustrated properties, missing from the Xbox 360 and PC Game Room versions, is included in the Windows Telephone version.

Portability

This port of Asteroids Palatial is extremely true-blue to the original, only it's not a perfect match for the platform. Every bit screenshots conspicuously testify, everything in Asteroids Deluxe is super tiny. Sprite size wasn't a problem in Centipede, but Asteroid's vector graphics are hollow and don't stand out much from the background. Setting the display to 'Stretch' instead of 'Native' (which I wouldn't recall of doing in Centipede or Pitfall!) helps, but does non eliminate the trouble.

Asteroids Deluxe doesn't need assistance from the small display to be a hard game. The original Asteroids Deluxe was designed to be more challenging than its predecessor, a task at which it probably succeeded too well. Multiple asteroids would exist enough to deal with, only the enemies and their fire are downright annoying. The inherently difficult movement and aiming (not actually a fault of the WP7 version) exacerbate the problem.

Game Room features

I'm not crazy almost the original Asteroids Deluxe game, but I do love the standard Game Room features that accompany this version. The main menu'due south 3D arcade chiffonier looks great. The Help & Options menu has some fairly useful sections: Instructions teaches you how to play (though it doesn't discuss strategy). History has a scant two sentences about the game's arcade origin; some information is better than none, I approximate.

The Configuration card features identical options to Centipede's. Gamers can select from Touch or (useless) Tilt controls, Native or Stretched displays, and conform the on-screen buttons' opacity. The PC and console version of Asteroids Deluxe allows players to tweak a couple of dip switch settings (for unranked games), but that option didn't make it into mobile Game Room titles – information technology's Ranked (official settings) only.

Asteroids Deluxe has both friends and global Leaderboards, and then information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to compare your performance with other players. Leaderboards can exist filtered by platform too. Interestingly, players are only allotted one slot in the Leaderboard even if they own the Game Room version of the game on multiple platforms. Thus my Windows Telephone high score will forever be blank unless I somehow trump my 360 score. That'south pretty unlikely. It's a minor complaint though, I know.

Medals

Like all Game Room titles, Asteroids Deluxe awards medals for completing different goals. The three categories are Score, Survival, and Playtime. Statuary, Silverish, and Gilded medals can be earned in each category, depending on operation. Only Survival actually gave me problems; information technology's not easy to stay alive for half dozen minutes in this game.

A cool characteristic of the Game Room series is that medals earned in the mobile version of this game automatically comport over to the Xbox 360 and PC version of Game Room and vice versa.

Achievements

Image courtesy of The Arcade Flyer Archive.

Medals are tied to three of Asteroid'southward Achievements. The game likewise features three location-based and three secret Achievements. Those 9 Achievements are identical to every other mobile Game Room game'due south Achievements, leaving room for just ane unique one. The lone original Achievement is awarded for shooting downwards x UFOs in one game. It should come with a little practice. The overall lack of inventiveness in mobile Game Room Achievements is a bit disappointing, just at least they will be obtainable for about people.

Overall Impression

No matter how true-blue and competent this version of Asteroids Deluxe is, the game is still held dorsum by virtue of being Asteroids Deluxe. Gamers almost universally concur that the original Asteroids is more fun to play; there'southward also a newer sequel, Blasteroids, whose graphics would work meliorate on minor displays. I hope Microsoft brings stronger Game Room titles to Windows Telephone in the futurity. Still, people who only dig Asteroids Deluxe or don't mind the faithfully awkward controls volition observe this version'south not a bad purchase.

Asteroids Deluxe costs $two.99. You'll probably desire to try the costless trial before purchasing unless you're a diehard Game Room fan. Yous can snag it here (Zune link) on the Marketplace.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/asteroids-deluxe-review

Posted by: holzbargeres.blogspot.com

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