Satazius

Developer: ASTRO PORT
Steam Release: Dec 2011
Hours Played: 2.8
Similar To: Deathsmiles / Gigantic Army / Steel Empire / Supercharged Robot Vulkaiser
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Sometimes all you want from a game is to blast at waves of enemies and see them die in a sea of satisfying explosions. The side-scrolling shoot 'em up Satazius scratches that itch but you'll need to be prepared for a few bullet-hell elements and precise manoeuvring around tight corners and small gaps as well. Before starting, you'll select which four different weapons to use. You get a primary weapon plus two secondary weapons which you toggle back and forth in the game. (Guided missiles seem best.) You also get a super-weapon which needs to get charged up. The screen forever pans forward as you manoeuvre your ship and fire at whatever enemies come your way. Mostly these are easy, cannon-fodder type foes who go down swiftly under a shower of missiles but you'll get trickier adversaries later.

BALANCE & PACE
Added to the mix are more powerful boss-type enemies who usually appear at the end of a level. These often bring bullet-hell madness and spray lots of missiles around. Added to this are areas that have barriers that you need to quickly destroy and channels you run through that require accurate movement. With all this going on plus power-ups to collect giving you shields and speed boosts, you're always kept busy. The game has checkpoints but they're not generous with them. For instance, in the first wave you're chased by a boss-ship through a narrow cave. Avoiding both its missiles and the cave walls is quite tricky... but even if you survive and escape to the other side it overtakes you and attacks. You might think you've done the hard work but if you suffer defeat - there's no checkpoint for you - it's back to the start of that bloody cave again!   
  

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
As mentioned the game is your typical old style, side-scrolling affair but what really helps you get into the zone, boosts those testosterone levels and makes you feel like a boss is the chunky and pounding soundtrack. It’s all very high energy and it’s a game that likes to throw you into the action with zero importance attached to levels or high-score charts. From the title-screen you may view a replay of a previous game, practice a bit by playing through the first level (not that there's any reason to do this), configure keys, quit the game or plunge straight in by hitting Start. After setting difficulty and choosing weapons you’re off.

PROGRESS SYSTEM
From hitting Start, you choose whether to go with easy or normal difficulty, then you choose your weapon set-up and then it's away you go. (Hard and Insane get added later.) In true arcade-style fashion, you may see how far you get with 3 ships or continue playing the game from the point where you lost those three ships. The score is reset if you do this. You may continue nine times which effectively gives you 27 ships with which to complete the entire game. Only your highest score is shown in-game by way of a target. One gripe I do have about the game is that it doesn’t actually tell you how many levels there are altogether.

CONCLUSION
Satazius is satisfying stuff but why is it not up there with Jamestown I hear you ask? Well, for one, it could have done with having some sort of high-scores chart. As is, you have your one high-score displayed at the top of the screen while playing. There are no menus to show your high-score in the different difficulty settings or, indeed, how many levels you have managed to complete at all - let alone how many there actually are in total. Little touches like keeping the player informed like this, or even having a Top 5 high-score chart for each difficulty are things players do expect and not including these features does mean there is something lacking. Still, to those just up for completing the game on the hard and then on the insane difficulty setting this is not a problem. Satazius is still a good, solid pick up and blast away game!