When I first saw this game, Astro Duel Deluxe, explained, I was intrigued, wanting very much to play it myself.
I grew up with the original NES and SNES, having loved many oldskool shooters, this game is no exception to the original mindset of games like Asteroids, …
This game really reminded me of Asteroids, but with a smart twist. However, honesty makes me also mention that the smart twist is also its biggest downside…
So let us begin, this game is basically an 8-bit styled space shooter, where you shoot enemies and basically survive the other ships. Limited by default to 3 shots, which do reload rather quickly, this game adds a certain difficulty level to the short plays and at the same time, it annoyed me that I only had a maximum of 3 bullets by default…
The game has 4 basic modes to play solo, Ship Hunters, where you just destroy the ships, Pilot Hunters, where you need to make sure to kill the pilots as well, Team Deathmatch, basically destroy the enemy ships as a team and then finally Team Annihilation, team vs team and killing the pilots is the main objective.
There is a total of 13 different level lay-outs, each with its own crazy features or death traps, adjust the settings to add more or fewer asteroids flying around your head, just to make it more or less hard to play, all in all, this game gets several things right. So why do I complain about parts of this game?
I would love for this game to become a bullet heaven, set it up with 8 adversaries and let it rip! But alas, the limit that I found so far, pits you against 5 other enemies that instantly attack each other when the level starts, I often found myself looking which ship was mine, while already being shot at… I would have liked a little more notice, like pushing a button to let the action start.
After you survive, your ship is shown on a race strip, where you advance according to a number of ships you blasted, the basic setting of places ranging from 5 to 13, 5 obviously finishes rather quickly and 13 does add to the fun. But the entire premise of how it goes down is a little boring.
Another thing I disliked, by default the Sudden Death feature is turned on, after a while of playing, the walls come closing in, wasting your ship upon touching. You can turn it off, but I wished it would be off by default.
In conclusion, this game is lots of fun as a party game, the quick game that keeps you occupied for 10 to 20 minutes!
But, it is expensive… My biggest gripe is whether or not it is worth the money you will spend, I personally rate it at 70%, but the price should probably lower it more… Should the developer ever add more functions, like the aforementioned multishot or a longer grace period prior to starting a level, I would applaud it very much!
