A game to make you laugh at games, a game to make you feel a little bad about yourself, and a game in which you destroy hundreds of spaceships within mere moments. UPGRADE COMPLETE has much in common with meta-brother-in-arms Achievement Unlocked – it turns one of the peripheral systems of gaming into a game itself. In this case, it’s a shmup built around chasing upgrades – spending in-game cash on more powerful weapons’n'that. Also, on new menu buttons, on background music and even on a more jolly GAME OVER screen. The combination of out and out silliness and excessive visual escalation is an awful lot of fun. At the same time, I’m not entirely convinced the gag/swipe works – and perversely, that might just be because the game itself does work rather well…
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