Format: Advance
Genre: Action
Developer: Pocket Studios
Publisher: THQ

Atrocious is a word rarely used. That word is very descriptive and fitting for this game. Truly, it has been far too many years since I yearned to play a game at 12 FPS. Alas, twas the only problem then ne'er would there be issue with they franchised gameth. Sadly, the framerate is only the beginning of the issues with this game. For starters, the sound quality is below par and very medium low for what the GBA is capable of doing. They clearly just copy/paste their franchised songs and tried a very small bit to find whichever tone sounded the best. It's pretty ironic too, because the music is probably the best of the 3 major parts of the game. The 3 major parts of any game are Graphics, Music, and Gameplay. The graphics in this one are pretty bad. I'm talking grey moving blob pixels bad. Atari had better graphics in some scenes. This game tries to market itself as a "space flight" sim or smhup or something, but it fails to understand the subtle details required to be those games. This game is an over-the-shoulder 1st person shmup styled game. If you've ever played Starfox, you know what it is. In fact, I have concrete evidence and proof that the developers took inspiration from Starfox. The gameplay is always on rails, so you can't explore or screw around like a flight sim. This is where the graphics begin to take a dark turn. When enemies come on screen they are tiny grey blobs, and stay that way for a very long time. Depending on the level, the tiny gray blobs might be on a huge gray background, all shooting tiny green lasers that you often don't see until you're getting hit by them. The goal of each level is different, sometimes you have to fill a quota of enemies, some levels are "speeder" levels where you just have to get to the end fast. The speeder levels have especially heinous graphics since you are going so fast. The framerate on these levels drops as low as 5 FPS. It's a literal PowerPoint presentation at that point. This wouldn't be a complete loss if the gameplay was fun, but it's not. Because of how small and amorphous enemies are, you're entirely forced to attempt shooting them while they're tiny specs. In the speeder levels, it's often worthless to even consider shooting the enemies. Why? Because if you hit ANYTHING in a speeder level you will instantly die and have to restart the entire level again! They're long levels too. Couple the length of the levels with the speed, bad framerate, and bad graphics, and you've got the recipe for a diarheanado. These speeder levels actually get worse the more you progress through the game. The final speeder level has several screen-blocking effects to piss the player off. This game is cheap, as in, it feels cheap. There's only about 10 levels in the game, but the quality of them, the controls, and the general feel produced by this pile of garbage chunk crap is just heinously bad. In both shmup and speeder levels, the game employs the good ol' tactic of "if you're too close to something you can't see it". That coupled with instadeath for touching things will cause unforeseen deaths. Some levels have enemies that come from behind as well. The worst are still the speeder levels, hands down. It's truly a "you have to experience this to realize how bad it is" type of thing. The controls in this game are very jaded as well. You get 2 ships to control throughout the game, the millennium falcon, and an x-wing. Both have missiles but function differently. The falcon's missiles explode and wipe out entire areas, while the x-wings missiles don't explode and are just a "strong attack". Both activated with the B button. A button is the laser. L and R buttons are "slow down" and "Accelerate" respectively. There's almost no indication that the L and R buttons do anything, I had to feel this one out to figure it out. The craziest part of this game is that once you beat the game you unlock a "bonus game" that's actually better than the regular game. It plays like a 2D side-scrolling shmup similar to Gradius. The funny part about this is that one of the powerups you unlock in the bonus game is the "Press B to (Barrel Roll)". See, I told you I had proof they took inspiration from star fox. Credits are after you beat episode VI. 3 people made this game, with 40 managers and sales merchants.

Hot Tips: Bonus Game Password - 4??F

All in All, Bare minimum of gamesmanship earns this a 1.0 score. Framerate was a huge issue. Not being able to fire because of objects on the screen. Horrible design. Bad graphics. Un-fun in general. Bottom of the barrel game trying to make money off of it's franchised name.