Developer Cross Eaglet has made quite a unique game for the Xbox 360 in the Indie Games channel titled REVOLVER360. Most readers who follow me know I am an arcade fanatic who enjoys vertical or horizontal shooters and know that I enjoy them quite dearly. I am used to most bullet hell shooters where your only options are to either avoid bullets, bomb out, or just chock it up to being blown up. REVOLVER360 gives you one more option to the mix, rotation of the playing field. It’s rare to see bullet hell games make remixes on the classic ideals of bullet evasion and REVOLVER360 piqued my interest. REVOLVER360 can be a bit on the flashy side, I’d say quite possibly distracting as there can be an overwhelming number of things going on sometimes.
The designs of the enemies and player ship are on the geometric side which keeps things basic and does keep a vintage feel much like Geometry Wars. It’s quite pretty for presentation, just albeit a little too much for the eyes to absorb sometimes. The game play on the other hand presents a fresh concept to bullet hell shooters and even offers a “Short Range” and “Infinite Range” mode of game for the players. I would encourage the player to practice a few rounds in the short run game before really giving it their all in the infinite run to learn the game mechanics of the game as there are fundamental differences between both version. The Short Range game blazes you through a 5-6 minute session giving you a basic ship and challenges you to get score multipliers as much as you can and has an ending boss battle at the end.
Short Range Mode is essentially a short score attack where you’re given a few minutes to cruise a set of stages with infinite life, but the catch is that if you get hit, you loose parts of your score multipliers. You also don’t get power ups as your ship is just bare basics with a machine gun, laser, and an overdrive field. The main challenge is trying to keep the multiplier going even throughout the final boss fight in Short Range Mode. Infinite Range Mode is a challenge of your comprehension that tests you to infinite levels, a limited amount of life points, and throws in power-ups to the mix. The challenge is that the subsequent waves get harder and harder and relies on one part skill (by evasion or rotation) and one part luck (by finding the right power-ups).
For those who like challenges and leaderboards, REVOLVER360 has a “gallery” section that contains those things. The leaderboards are connected to Live if you have Xbox Live Gold, allowing you to see how you rank with other players online and local players if you just have Xbox Live Silver. The “trophies” are unofficial achievements in the game as Xbox Live Indie Games are not able to use the Xbox Live Achievement system and these are no joke. I will say that for the value of 240 Microsoft Points ($3), it is recommended for the arcade shooter or bullet hell fanatic only. Casual gamers will miss the quirks that set REVOLVER360 apart from other shooters in the sea of games unfortunately. For more screenshots, please check out the gallery below provided by Cross Eaglet!
Purchase REVOLVER360 either here or from the Xbox 360 Dashboard. If you’re leery on the purchase, there is a demo available as well.
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