Twin Stick Shooters, the good old days of arcade fun, and Nintendo Switch! Since there landed yet another installment of this genre on yeh good old Switchie, sadly, the game is a little bit buggy and was rather unplayable. Let’s take a look at the world of Xenoraptor and then try this game on a different platform later, the Nintendo Switch.
Twin-Stick Madness
XenoRaptor is supposed to be a frantic and frenzied twin-stick shooter. In this game, you are pitted against an interstellar armada. Each ship you fight looks like something from the Robot Wars tv-show you had a long time ago. You know, the show in which they had to create their robots and make them fight each other…? No, does not ring a bell? When you defeat your foes, strip them of their parts to assemble the ultimate weapon. From evasive teleporting and defensive mines to railguns, tractor beams, and mind control, XenoRaptor is bullet-hell action with countless tactical possibilities, or it should be.
XenoRaptor – Bugfest
The whole point of a twin-stick shooter is to create a better ship and fight off more and more strange waves of enemies. The premise of Xenorapter is not that different. Arm your cyber dragon with various hulls and engines, and weapons such as lightning shotguns, laser nukes, ghost missiles, and more. Then go off into the world you have to defend (starting with Earth) and face the might of a space skeleton armada and defeat the screen-filling bosses. Sadly, my first mission was bugged – and it was not even a little one. I beat the waves of enemies and only had one enemy left, somewhere in the corner of my mini-map, or at least, that’s where it should have been.
I kept flying and flying and flying (for about 10 minutes) in the one direction, back in the other direction – in search of one small red dot. Could not find it since it was not there. Then I spent 20 minutes searching for the bugger and then had the only choice to reset my game. So I did, and yes, I did find the last enemy after playing through the level again. Faced off against the boss, and the game bugged out still. Another reset was needed to progress towards the next level and world(s).
Xenoproblem
Since I’m not one to give up easily, I looked up the problem – to see if it was a common one with other platforms, since this game is a port of the such. I found Steam reviews that gave Xenorapter a 9/10 and stating no such thing as game-breaking bugs, so there has to be some deeper layer in this game, no? I reinstalled the game to be sure that it wasn’t just some random hickup, and I progressed a little bit further, only to be met with a system error a few levels in.
Conclusion
So, to summarize the rest of the game: Strategically turn environmental hazards – such as asteroids, minefields, and radioactive clouds – against your enemies and test your skills in the campaign, boss rush mode, and alongside friends in local co-op. I could not check all the assets of Xenoraptor, and I ask you to play this game on any other platform, then the Nintendo Switch – at least until they patch out the bugs. If you want to play another twin-stick shooter, maybe try Sine Mora. And since I think it’s not fair against the developers of Xenoraptor, I will not score this one.
