Endless Enemies, Endless Sadness
HIGH Smooth controls and a great art style.
LOW Repetitive combat gets old fast.
WTF Why do these ships look like potatoes?
I enjoy bite-sized arcade games — titles I can play for 30-60 minutes and then put down to do something else. Galaxy Warfighter is a space shoot-’em-up where players pilot a ship through wave after wave of enemies, eventually ending with a boss fight.
As players destroy ships, they collect coins used between missions to upgrade with better guns, more health, and special abilities like a damage pulse or a time stop. Some enemies will also drop short-term power-ups like a burst of energy bolts that spiral around the ship for a few seconds, a shield to block shots, or a nuke eliminating all enemies on screen.
The control here are smooth and responsive — players control the ship with their mouse and use two number keys for special abilities. The ship shoots bullets on its own, which allows players to focus on maneuvering around objects and avoid getting hit — since only the center core of the ship takes damage, advanced players can slip by waves of bullets with ease. With this simple setup the experience is easily understood and approached, but this extreme simplicity is also a problem.
Games don’t need a huge variety of enemies to make things interesting, but having more than four, total, would be a good idea. They have different sprites but the same attack style, and for the couple of enemies that are a bit different, they’re just bullet sponges that are harder to dodge around instead of foes that offer interesting attack patterns or problems to solve. The same goes for the bosses (again, four total), all of which have identical patterns. When playing ten missions in a session and fighting the same boss for over half of them, the appeal of Galaxy Warfighter is lost quickly. Even worse? There’s no leaderboard to post scores to, so even that appeal is lost.
Galaxy Warfighter was good for about an hour of play, but to just got too repetitive after that. I kept going through mission after mission hoping for a new boss or an enemy that would keep things fresh, but that hope faded as I kept flying the same missions for what felt like endless waves.
Disclosures: This game is developed by Qplaze and published by JoyBitz Ltd. It is currently available on PC and Switch . This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and all achievements were completed (around 120 levels in total). There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. Nothing here more serious than spaceships exploding into green credit coins the player will use to upgrade their ship. It’s good for all ages.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Text is not resizable, but text isn’t really utilized in-game other than for menu descriptions. I didn’t notice any relevant audio cues needed for play. I’d say it’s fully accessible.
Remappable controls: This game’s controls are not remappable and there is no control diagram. On PC, players can move the ship with the mouse, and use the 1 and 2 keys for their powerups.
While Sonic and Street Fighter were great places to start, his first love was Final Fantasy X when his dad bought a PS2. Ever since, that love for gaming has evolved -- there are a number of game worlds out there, and he intends to explore them all. RPG to horror, platformers to casual and everything in between -- if it’s available, he’ll play it.
While his time is short between writing reviews, tabletop gaming, and attempting to start a cheesecake business, he has caught all 806 pokemon and can speedrun Star Fox 64 in less than 40 minutes. He’s always looking for new things to try and new challenges to conquer. You can find him on Twitter -- @eugene_sax.
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Shame to hear, as I was looking forward to this one. Also, the gameplay screenshot looks eerily like another shmup – Steredenn (which I found to be an excellent game!).