DARK - STAR Reviews

Horrible controls

mark2series

Deleting immediately. Controls are terrible. Judging where object are on the screen is nearly impossible. Shooting scheme is terrible.

On the surface, Dark Star seems neat enough: it's a straightforward, simple, pretty, and fast-paced rail shooter with an interesting control scheme, and I did make an effort to try to like this game. Underneath, though, it suffers from some serious problems. My complaints: The way the levels, asteroids, and enemy projectiles curve along with the often-deceptively small movement range make it hard to eyeball where to dodge in a game that's all about dodging, especially when the bullet barrages are flying directly into and covering up the camera. This same issue also makes stars more difficult to collect than they should be, which is bad since they are required for ship upgrades. The random level generator is also flawed: the difficulty level can vary wildly from area to area, to the point that you can occasionally play a stage where no enemies appear at all. Personally, I also think that the level design grows repetitive quickly and provides little sense of progression, but that is more of a matter of opinion. And though this is also subjective, I find the slowdown combined with the loss of control when barrel rolling to be very annoying given that I can already move from end to end of the screen with long swipes. This is especially unpleasant because of how finicky the controls can be: if I try to repeatedly swipe the screen with one thumb to move the ship quickly and tap on an enemy to attack it, the game will register my actions as a double-tap and cause the ship to execute a barrel roll. All of these factors combine to make the already-bland mission system also uses for unlocking upgrades that the game uses to enhance longevity feel like tedious busy work. While Dark Star does have potential as a rail shooter, an ARC Squadron it is not, and it needs a great amount of tweaking before it can be called enjoyable.

Terrible

Mozaicflo

Well, the graphics look cool, but this thing is so lame. No story. Gameplay jumps from 1 of 5 random environments to the next, and there are limited weapons. Why is this thing even $2? Don't waste your money because of its good looks! You've been warned.

Has Good possibilities!!

bigrand1

But I'd like to see a joystick for controlling the ship and some sensitivity control as well as a rapid-fire with a constant press instead of the crazy tapping. Then maybe some weapon variety! Then we're talking about a real good game here!

Unplayable

Lordshadowz

The control scheme requires you to control the ship movement all over the screen with your one hand and tap each enemy to then fire while trying to maneuver. It's ridiculous. You can't see anything with both hands all over the screen. It's frustrating. I feel like I wasted money since I can't even play.

So pretty but controls are weird...

ChaosKnign

While I'll echo what some have written about this shooter, I love the graphics and gameplay. At first, I was put off by the control scheme, the typical stick and button or two-stick setup. It as uncomfortable holding it in my hands. What made me pick this up again was that my 3-year old saw me playing this game and immediately liked the shiny explosions. So, I would give him my phone with this game to entertain him while at restaurants or waiting for his mom to finish shopping. I noticed that he would place the phone on the table or his lap and use one finger to move the ships while using the other one to tap on the "bad guys". It seemed quite natural for him... perhaps the dev is a 3 year-old? At any rate, I wasn't going to be bested by a 3 year-old, so I tried his method. It's still challenging but enjoyable nonetheless. I love the punishing, crazy Japanese shoot 'me ups, so this is right up my alley. I might add another star if I were to get a choice of control schemes. In the end, the graphics and gameplay certain sell this for me. Just get ready for the unconventional control scheme.