By Jim Rossignol on January 20th, 2011 at 10:25 am.
Fancy-lookin’ side-scrolling shooter A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda has a demo out. Apparently “you are Ares, the first Zytron immune robot.” So that sounds exciting. There are also massive explosions, boss-battles, and lots of running, jumping, and shooting, as you might expect from this kind of thing. For the purposes of your education, I’ve posted a trailer of the game in action below. There are combos and such.
A.R.E.S. : Extinction Agenda by Extend Studio from Nenin Ananbanchachai on Vimeo.
20/01/2011 at 10:32 Dominic White says:
It looks and sounds a LOT like Megaman X, but with design elements from Metroid. Still, my main reservation after seeing that trailer is that enemy deaths just seem to be an explosion effect and them vanishing. Being segmented sprites, it would have been far cooler (and more satisfying) for enemies to actually collapse in a scattered pile of smoldering robo-bits.
20/01/2011 at 10:57 icupnimpn2 says:
THAT’S your RESERVATION? As in, your sticking point against buying/playing this game? Oh man, people are much pickier than I’ll ever be.
20/01/2011 at 11:47 Dominic White says:
I’m pretty much flat broke at the moment, and I’ve got a backlog of approximately a hojillion games to get through, too, plus I’ve got stuff to hack through to review over at the site I write for.
Trust me, if I had a little more cash, I’d buy this in a heartbeat. It really is only a minor gripe.
20/01/2011 at 10:38 Kieron Gillen says:
I wish I was a Zytron immune robot :(
KG
20/01/2011 at 15:59 Liquidben says:
I hear they’re doing wonderful things with anti-Zytron creams these days.
20/01/2011 at 17:17 Arathain says:
I’m Zytron immune, although not a robot. It’s nice, although not as applicable as you’d think.
21/01/2011 at 03:09 Bret says:
Heh, that’s what I thought, and then I met some poor guy who wasn’t immune.
Just kinda pathetic. Couldn’t properly appreciate fine wines with too much Zytron, no appreciation for Zytron infused ice-cream…
Living half a life.
20/01/2011 at 11:22 Lavatein says:
£7 gets you episode 1 which clocks in at about three hours. Too pricey for me.
20/01/2011 at 11:24 godgoo says:
Sorta reminds me of Turrican which consumed many of my younger hours on my Amiga 1200.
20/01/2011 at 11:48 Dominic White says:
Liked Turrican?
http://turrican.gamevoice.de/hurrican_site/
Try this fan-made sequel, which (in my humble opinion) more than lives up to the source material. Even captures the style of the original Turrican music perfectly, without going over old ground.
20/01/2011 at 12:25 godgoo says:
@ Dominic White
Amazing!! the inital splash screen was so very nostalgic of all the warez group splash screens that appeared on those beautiful green/blue/grey floppies all those years ago! much thanks, now to play…
20/01/2011 at 16:05 Thecreeperskg says:
Turrican II on Commodore64 was the best game ever!!!EVERER!!!!! EVEREST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beating the Machine for the first time after COUNTLESS deaths and REWINDS of my cassete player and beeing rewarded with the only available Amiga500 image on a Commodore64 was pure orgasm….( hey, I was only 14, what the f*** did I knew about orgasms :D)
I might even buy the new Commodore64 PC edition just for the software…
21/01/2011 at 10:03 RegisteredUser says:
At least this guy recognized Turrican and not “Megaman X”.
What IS the world coming to.
20/01/2011 at 11:40 toomany says:
Man, the screenshot reminded me of abuse for some reason and i got a little bit excited before i read the description and watched the trailer. I’m not sure why, but I have a lot of fond memories of that game.
20/01/2011 at 11:56 Navagon says:
Like a trip down memory lane. :D
20/01/2011 at 12:08 Anthile says:
I played the demo like, a week ago and I liked it a lot. It’s pretty much Megaman X worship with lots of explosions. Unfortunately, I still have about a dozen games from the recent Steam sales so I’m not going to buy this any time soon. I guess indie games have a hard time right now.
20/01/2011 at 12:23 Poo Bear says:
A bit disappointed, looks pretty and all, but I didn’t engage my brain once. Played on easy, straight through to the end, stand still, fire up, boss dead, the end. Tried again on hard, it didn’t really seem any harder, still didn’t move at the end, but this time I did have to let off a smart bomb (valkyl attack?) with the last boss. I didn’t need to upgrade anything. I know it’s run and gun fun, but …
21/01/2011 at 04:08 JohnnyMaverik says:
Agreed. It’s a shame, I remember playing their first demo build back when the game was still called Trashman and honestly, I can’t really tell what’s changed since then, and then was around a year a go now…
20/01/2011 at 14:01 Anton says:
Looks a lot like ABUSE
20/01/2011 at 14:16 Brumisator says:
As I suspected from the screenshots, the player character animations are plain horrible.
I’ll give this demo a “meh”.
21/01/2011 at 11:45 KillahMate says:
Hey, someone else noticed the player animations. Yeah, they’re pretty bad, they sort of ruin the momentum of the game for me. Otherwise looks like pretty high production value.
20/01/2011 at 15:35 fuggles says:
Wow, I sent this to walker a long time ago. The HUGE problem with this game is that you get to spend upgrades from enemy robotics, dropped on their destruction, to upgrade your guns and the enemies respawn THE INSTANT they are off screen, so I found myself doing laps of the level just grinding my gear up.
20/01/2011 at 16:01 Zyrxil says:
ABUSE? No no no, Alien Soldier.
20/01/2011 at 16:14 Eric says:
The demo’s okay. I didn’t particularly like the way aiming and movement were handled when using a controller – precision aiming is done with the right stick, but jumping is done with a face button, so you can be jumping or aiming, not both. I’m guessing that a keyboard and mouse setup alleviates this problem, but I generally dislike sidescrollers with KB/M (Abuse notwithstanding).
It’s pretty, but also felt a little bolted together. The 2D sprites on 3D background is a good look, but a lot of the time they didn’t quite feel like they blended together, and it seemed like there was a lot of “big explosion to distract you from the clunky stuff” going on.
Not a bad effort, but not something I was hankering to play through the rest of, either.
20/01/2011 at 20:09 returntonull says:
Kinda amused everyone is trying to rate it along lines of Megaman, and such. Alien Soldier was probably the most apt comparison because this is very much a SHMUP. Yeah, the game doesn’t auto scroll, but it still comes down to avoiding bullets to combo up a highscore with big multisection bosses at the end of every level. A bomb attack function to clear the screen when things get to hectic, and so on.