In the year 2011, the gaming public is inundated with military themed, cover mechanic shooters. This revelation is a little depressing as I grew up in the heyday of first person shooters (FPS) games with Doom being my first FPS encounter. I will confess that I have a soft spot for arcade-styled shooters with a life and armor meter, an arsenal of weapons, power ups (Quad Damage, invisibility, etc), and just a ton of things to shoot. Plot and story didn’t have a major place in this style of game (except for the usual “save the universe” plot), the focus was just to shoot and destroy things. So when the trailer of Xotic came up on Steam, it piqued my interests as something I should keep an eye on. Now that it’s been released, it’s time to see if Xotic can keep up with those treasured FPS games of yore.
The story in Xotic is that many years ago there was an evil being called The Orb who was sealed away. As these things tend to go, The Orb has finally managed to break free and has embarked on a path of carnage, devouring life and destroying planets in the progress. The player is cast in the role of The Macroterra, a being tasked with terraforming devastated worlds back to what they once were and capturing The Orb before it escapes once more. The story is pretty basic, as an arcade styled FPS game should be, with a few difficulty levels to pick from.
The first mission orients the player through basic mechanics while teaching core concepts such as combo chains, score and power-up items. After completing the tutorial, the player is then ranked in in a five star system and leaderboard scores are updated. On first completion of a level, the player is then given an XP reward to redeem for additional weapons, as well as offensive and defensive upgrades. Further upgrades become available for purchase as the player proceeds through levels in Xotic.
Even though the level design is linear, there is so much to do and if you are trying to case a level for the star for speed in an attempt for a five star rating you may find yourself asking “99%?! What the hell did I miss?!” In later levels, this becomes a challenge as you will end up having to mitigate enemy threats (beings corrupted by The Orb’s power) as well as environmental hazards all while trying to complete the level. I personally found this to be a great challenge because the difficulty curve is adjusted gradually to get the player to really work for that perfect five star rating.
The ranking system really gives Xotic so much needed replay value as there are no multiplayer modes. The only competitive value from Xotic is derived from blitzing the levels and trying to one-up the score of other players. If you’re a fan of leaderboard competition, Xotic may occupy a lot of your time. Even if you’re not too keen on having the best score, there are still over twenty levels to be completed.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
While Xotic may not be the biggest blockbuster title boasting hundreds of hours of game play, it sticks to the core values of old school FPS titles and does a mighty fine job of it. I can personally say that Xotic really brings me back to the days when I was just a kid playing Heretic or Doom on my first computer. The amount of weapon modifications, combo chains, and varied challenges really kept my interest.
The price for Xotic is just right at $9.99 on Steam and there’s even a demo available as well. For the overall package, I believe the folks over at WXP Games did a fine job by putting Xotic at a decent price considering how solid of a package it is. Check out a few more images below in addition to the YouTube trailer if you haven’t already.
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