Разработчик: KTX Software
Описание
Redux: Dark Matters is a fast-paced space shooting game with fresh scoring elements and some review called the game a bastard-hard shooter. However, you have to master 7 stages with different ambiance which is indeed anything but easy - not yet spoken of the boss encounters. Always watch out since each and every thing is loaded with whatever to discover. Your ship is armed with rapid fire, sub-weapons, rockets and more - in other words with all you need to make it through - it depends on you!
The story takes place in the year 2067, when the “Space Force” organisation was exploring the galaxy for new strong and powerful materials to produce more powerful battle ships they discovered a space mine on a strange asteroid on the enemy territories. The scientists now began to analyze the material and concluded they had found the one material to build the best space ship ever.
One year later, the prototype was finished and the test results show unmatched battle power. However, the material seemed to be unstable and the use of the assembled ship was highly risky but since the Evil threat, was close to destroy the whole universe, the organisation was forced to let the ship fly.
NOW, go to experience the highlights of the game - pilot your space ship, blast off the mechanized servants of evil and save the world!
Game Features
Superb Arcade Style Game Graphics
7 Stages with Huge Boss Enemies
Tons of Weapons
Two player ships to choose from with different Weapons
Normal and Veteran Difficulty
Instant Respawn
Arcade Gameplay and Addictive Scoring System
Awesome Soundtrack Composed by Andre Neumann feat. Chris Huelsbeck!
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP
- Processor: 2 GHz
- Memory: 1024 MB RAM
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 500 MB available space
Отзывы пользователей
On this 5 star rating scale;
★★★★★ Loved it / Recommended
★★★★☆ Liked it / Recommended
★★★☆☆ It was OK / Not recommended
★★☆☆☆ Disliked it / Not recommended
★☆☆☆☆ Hated it / Not recommended
It was a ★★★☆☆ for me.
Redux: Dark Matters is an old school inspired shoot 'em up. It's the second revision of a game called Dux. At first, I didn't like it that much. Though, the more I played, the more I started to appreciate the things this game does do well.
There are 7 stages to this game, 1 loop only. So just under half an hour for a run. For a game that is in its third version, there are few ways to play the game: a 'normal' mode and a 'veteran' mode. There is a big difference to how the modes play, because of the unique spacecraft used in each mode.
'Normal' is kind of easy (except for the difficulty spike that is the last level). See, the spaceship used in this mode can use various power ups: regular power ups to upgrade your forward firing gun; missiles that can fire both vertically or horizontally; and force bits that shield your ship from enemy bullets. The ship is capable of a charged shot as well, that passes through obstacles. In addition, this ship has a 'Soak' ability that absorbs most enemy bullets, spores and the likes, and lets you spit them out in the form of a homing laser if you press the 'soak' button again. The more bullets you absorb, the more your soak meter refills. It almost feels like cheating! Nevertheless, it's how it is meant to be played, as you get a score bonus for absorbing bullets and destroying enemies with the homing laser.
Level design is good for the most part, and will force you to use the charged shot, soak ability, and the sub-weapon (i.e. the missiles) if you want to route it optimally. The boss designs are a big no-no, for they are all designed the same way and all beaten easily by just flying to the left en staying there in the middle of the screen, with the occasional dodge up or down to avoid some unstoppable laser or projectile, while soaking up the rest of the bullets. Weapon upgrades reset one level if you lose a ship, so recovery is possible, although I found tackling stage 7 without a fully upgraded ship hard at that time!
'Veteran' then - as the name suggests - is the game's hard mode. The spaceship you fly in this mode does not have the 'soak'ability, nor can it attach force bits. You will have to rely on dodging only, to navigate the bullets spewed at you. This makes the boss fights infinitely more interesting than in 'normal' mode. But presented a problem for my limited gaming skills on stages 2 and after, where recovery is really hard as you will quickly get overwhelmed because you can't kill enemies fast enough when not fully upgraded. Sticking with it, I did learn some tricks to get through some sections easier and was able to recover from being set back to level 0 shots.
The 8-way controls are fine and are remappable for keyboard and controllers (don't know about joystick compatibility), although the UI could do with some more work.
I think it looks very nice for a shmup. Sure, the liberal use of colors everywhere make it more of a love or hate affair. But there is no denying that the sprite work, foregrounds and backgrounds are well all realized with some fine detail as well. It does suffer from visual clutter, IMO. As the pod in front of your ship stops most of the bullets, but not all. The same goes for the bullet sucking ability. So, with the 'soak' ability activated, the visual overload did get overwhelming and confusing at first. I found it hard to distinguish the stuff that will destroy the spaceship, among all the ore (which converts into points) and enemy bullets that do get absorbed. Also, in 'Veteran' mode, some enemy bullet sprites go underneath your own bullet sprites when they overlap, making them basically invisible.
Is it a bug? Or on purpose? I don't know. But having no sound whatsoever from your bullets firing didn't sound right to me, although I got used to it. Otherwise, the SFX do their job. The music is a more subdued, spacey affair, which I only started to appreciate when I turned down the sound effects to 1 in the options menu.
Redux's technical aspects on Steam: Graphical assets are at 1920x1080. Higher resolutions will upscale from that. The game runs at 60fps. I believe you need to engage a frame rate limiter, or else the gameplay will speed up if you run at refresh rates above 60Hz. The sound and music are presented in stereo. My game always crashes to desktop after I want to restart for a third time. You're greeted with the two opening splash screens every time you restart. Why? Finally, Redux: Dark Matters on Steam only has a local high score table.
All in all, I got it cheap, and it provided some entertaining hours, so I don't regret my purchase at all. But I feel it's not fine-tuned enough to recommend even in its third iteration (Dux, Dux 1.5 and Redux: Dark Matters).
This is a game that draws heavy inspiration from R-Type and Pulstar but doesn't really do much to draw people in. There's no stage select, only start game and options choices. There's two ships, one of which will make the game really easy and a 2nd ship which might give some people a run for their money since it lacks a shield. It's a pretty straightforward point collecting shmup which isn't really all that challenging for veterans. Maybe a pickup on sale for those that aren't veterans but there's only so little mileage possible to get out of this game.
interesting title that has come around on me in the lead up to the new R Type release.
Redux: Dark Matters pays homage to classic shmups such as R-Type, XEXEX, and Pulstar.
Is it as good as any of them? Not really.
Is it still worth playing? Ehhhh....I guess? Possibly...possibly maybe...maybe possibly...but certainly not definitely.
First off, it's a good-looking game, but it's also not. Everything looks sharp and really clean. The problem is everything also has this bright and cheery aesthetic. In a way, it's a conscious design-decision. The backgrounds are fairly muted, while the player-ship, enemies, and bullets are colourful* and easily distinguishable. While I respect that, I think the artist went a little too far. In stage 2, it seems that half the enemies are firing flowers. Are they trying to kill me with kindness? What's the deal here?
Still, this is merely nitpicking compared to Redux's most glaring issue; it's way too easy. When fully-powered, the player-ship is protected from about 90% of the enemy's arsenal. Sure, lasers and bullets that might hit from behind are worrying, but they don't come up all that often. If that wasn't enough, there are usually 2-3 extra lives in every stage, plus a couple extends from surpassing certain score thresholds. If that wasn't enough, then the player can hit a button. This causes a vortex to swallow up any nearby bullets for several seconds. This special ability is tied to a meter, but it refills fairly quickly.
Now if all of that still(!) wasn't enough, there's also the portions of the game that went overlooked. The fourth boss has laser cannons placed along the top and bottom of the screen, except for a massive space towards the left side. This is the most obvious safe-spot I've ever seen. Instead of forcing the player to weave in-between bullets approaching from above and below, all anyone has to do is sit back, watch, and laugh. I'm guessing that when this game was remade in wide-screen, nobody bothered to account for the additional real estate.
I play a lot of STGs, but I'm a mediocre talent at best. I still cleared this game with 10 lives remaining, on my very first play-through. Granted, this was on the default ship, which is practically invincible. Redux added a ship designed specifically for veteran shmup-players, but it's loaded with oversights. The most obvious and ridiculous of the problems is that the veteran-ship's weaponry OVERLAPS THE ENEMY BULLETS! When I saw this, my jaw hit the floor so hard it drove through the earth, and then I cut my chin on the sharp edge of a dinosaur bone. I can't even remember the last time I saw this happen in a shmup.
Was this an actual idea by the developer? Did they think: "Those guys who play shmups by holding down the fire button all the time annoy me soooooo much. We have to do something about them."? I can't come up with a reasonable explanation, I simply can not. So if you're firing away, there's a good chance that you won't even see most of the bullets that are coming directly at you. That's just great. Veteran-ship also lacks the force-pod/other shields, which causes the game's difficulty to do a complete 180. Situations that were originally exceedingly simple become absurdly improbable.
Dux originally started off as a strict R-Type clone. It employed a checkpoint-system, which kicked players backwards whenever they died, rather than respawning them immediately. Over the next couple re-releases, the game has become considerably more lax, but that isn't enough of an excuse to assume that anyone can reasonably finish it without shields. The amount of bullets on-screen never hits danmaku levels, but it's overkill all the same. On a normal play-through, anyone can sleep-walk through Redux, but they'll hit a brick wall as early as stage 2, with the veteran ship. That isn't balanced, not in the slightest. If it were up to me, I would have made the charge-shot slightly wider, so that hard-to-reach enemies don't get quite as many opportunities to clog the screen with bullets. I also would have lowered the density of certain bullet-patterns.
Or I would have just made a different game, one that's not actually designed around having force-pods or shields just to survive. Redux is an otherwise competently-made shooter held down by a complete lack of challenge. When it tries to break away, it goes too far. In any case, this shmup simply isn't entertaining.
If you have played R-type, dont give this game a miss.
As a horizontal shooter n recently steam published. wAited 2 years for this becos it was a Dreamcast only version.
The graphics smooth, controls fluid, weapons wah everything.But the force bit cannot detach ahhhhh. Shump Collectors shouldnt give this a miss thats all i can say
The graphics and the music are alright, nothing ground breaking, but not bad either.
On level 7, there's a silly difficulty spike, chances are you're going to die several times before you memorize it and manage to beat it, and guess what ? because the continues are limited, you will have to replay all those 6 levels again before getting to try again, it can get really annoying and really boring.
Not a bad game, but the limited continues can make the game annoying for the non-hardcore shmup fans, specially with that silly difficulty spike there's on level 7.
Since there's no neutral reviews for steam and i grabbed this on a steam sale for a few cents, i'm willing to give it the Positive.
Terrible...
A mediocre indie shooter that was released on the Dreamcast. It's a horizontal shoot'em up that really doesn't bring anything new to the table and comes off as being very basic. The controls seems floaty at first, but I quickly got accustomed to it. The game's art direction is definitely off putting for me as everything seems too big and toyish. There are 2 tracks in the game that sound pretty good Stage 7 and the game over screen. The rest of the tracks are forgettable. The game itself is pretty bare bones with its features. There are no replays, no online leader boards, but there's at least some graphic settings and remappable options in the settings .exe.
Almost all of the stages are ridiculously easy to get through with bosses offering some challenge. The difficulty just isn't there until Stage 7 where all hell breaks loose. It almost seems like all their work in terms of bullet patterns went only to that stage. There are other shooters who have gone this route and have done a better job with it. It's definitely not a horrible game at all and playing it on Veteran really brings a new twist to the game and makes it a bit more entertaining. Buy this only if you're really into STGs and just want something to scratch that itch in between notable releases.
Also, I've played this game for about 6 or 7 hours. I must have left the game on during a weekend trip or something.
Pros:
-Nice visuals
Cons:
-Boring gameplay.
-Quite easy, even on hard difficult setting.
-Arcade stick madcatz TE2 support is unstable.
I'm giving this a positive recommendation with a caveat: there's bit of a frustration factor
What's frustrating about it:
-Many objects on screen (the ship, enemies, bullets) are rather bulky which oftentimes leaves little room to maneuver.
-The space ship doesn't move very quickly, so you're handicapped by less-than-avg speed when dodging obstacles.
-There's so much on-screen clutter, it might be a little confusing by what are collectables and what are harmful objects. Also sometimes you're not sure what exactly is part of the background and what is in the foreground.
What's good about it:
-The visuals are stunning; very vibrant colors and mostly nice level designs for a schmup
-OST is fantastic, fitting to the game for the most part
-The challenge isn't over-the-top unfair although it's still quite challenging (still yet to try advanced difficulty level), but fun enough to play
-Power ups are REALLY helpful, especially when you're powered to full capacity, then it's blast to go through the levels.
Also note:
There's a minor learning curve to the game, in which you need to acclimate to the shield and what exactly the shield can absorb, along with the controls and bulky objects.
I'd give this a solid 8/10
Beautiful shmup. I've played Dux on dreamcast , this one is a sequel and it's HD screen. Easy shmup :)
10/10 Soundtrack, 10/10 Relaxing 2nd level, graphics are fun to look at, there is a WARNING dialog before a bossfight, you fly to the right and cover the screen with lasers.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | KTX Software |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 19.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 61 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 50% положительных (12) |