AppReviewToday- AppReviews

Game Stew is back with yet another stylized pixel game with an offbeat structure and rpg mechanics. This one, titled Omega 13, is a mech combat game where you play as some sort of gladiator trying to battle your way through the top ranks to discover some hidden truths. Like many Game Stew games, it's pretty odd. For the most part, it's strangeness adds a lot to its appeal, with the only drawback really being how long and sloggy it can be to make progress.

Clumsy clashing

For the most part, Omega 13 is all about launching your mech into an arena to fight any number of enemy mechs. These fights take place on a grid based map you have an overhead view of on your cockpit display, and you have to maneuver the pedals and buttons on your dashboard to position yourself so you can hit enemies with your weapons or otherwise move out of the way of theirs.

This all takes place in a turn-based manner, where you have a limited amount of “action points” to turn, move, and attack before your enemies do the same. Between this model for combat and some of the audio visual design, Omega 13's mechs have a really weighty feel to them as opposed to some mecha fiction representations of mechs as nimble combat suits.

Colorful customizing

When you are between battles, Omega 13 returns you to its main menu but there you can go to the in-game bar to chat up contacts or the garage to customize your mech in the way that you see fit. In both locations are an interesting cast of characters that occasionally will reveal new things about the game world to you or otherwise spew canned dialog at you, but in both cases it's clear there was some inspiration and flair in creating these characters and world, even if some phrasing is strange.

As for mech customization, you can re-tool just about every piece of your combat robot. Weapons, chassis, armor, and all the expected bits and pieces can be swapped around to change the way your mech moves and operates. Omega 13 also goes so far as to give customization options for your cockpit controls and decorations, both of which also alter the overall performance of your suit in battle. It's a fabulously detailed system, though I will say that it can take a lot of battling to unlock a decent variety of customization options and I'm not sure there's a much of a need to engage with it once you've settled into a configuration that works.

Launch, kill, repeat

Omega 13's primary appeal is its style. Everything in the game looks and feels really cool or presents interesting concepts. Underneath that exterior though is a pretty simple game that can be fun enough to engage with, but ultimately isn't particularly challenging. This is to say that once I got a handle on the mech controls and a loadout I liked, I'd clear every combat encounter completely unscathed and without feeling like I was in any position of potential failure.

This still can be fun in a way. Mastery of a cool mech feels cool, after all. My only problem then became just how long the game is stretched out. Omega 13 has you fight up through ranks starting down at 1,000 and up to the number one spot. You move up the ranks in multiples but even then it takes a lot of slow fights to ascend with just a few breadcrumbs of story and the promise of new gear you probably don't need being the only things to drive you forward through it.

The bottom line

You can always bank on a Game Stew game being unique and stylish. Omega 13 is no exception, and I quite enjoy the concepts behind its mech combat. Its only real problem is in how it balances its pace and difficulty, as the game is too slow for how long it is and too easy for how deep its customization options go.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/omega-13-review/

UFO99 is a quirky little arcade game where you pilot a ship that you have to weave between enemies and obstacles in an arena in order to pick up items that help you score and survive. It almost feels like a mini-game that has been given just enough additional substance to make it a repeatable score-chaser. The game certainly has its charms, but ultimately UFO99 wears thin due to how limited an experience it is.

Hammer and hover

The concept behind UFO99 is quite simple: You are a defenseless ship that needs to avoid all projectiles and enemies for as long as possible. With each run starting with a 30 second timer, that sounds manageable, right? Well, presumably it is if avoidance is all you want to do, but UFO99 makes things a little more complicated for anyone wanting to rack up a high score.

As you fly around an arena filling with enemies, UFO99 also spawns a few different items that float by for you to pick up. Hammers destroy individual enemies and make coins fly out of them, clocks add 5 seconds to your round timer, bombs kill everything on screen, and a boss key interrupts your run for an untimed boss fight. Dashing around to collect all of these items is key to making UFO99 runs satisfying as an arcade experience.

Charm and chaos

To help you pick up items quickly and survive a bit better, UFO99 has a dash button that conveniently makes your craft temporarily invulnerable in addition to gaining speed. Judicious use of this dash gets important on deep runs of UFO99 as the screen can get filled with enemies that feel practically impossible to avoid without this move at your disposal.

There isn't a ton more to the game than that, but UFO99's overall aesthetic is a charming and delightful mishmash of bright, colorful, and cute animals, objects, and symbols which is just fun to look at as you play. After each round, your point total is scored by how many coins you've collected, and every 2,000 coins you gather lets you use an in-game gachapon machine to unlock new kinds of UFOs to pilot.

Free flyin'

UFO99 is a free-to-play game supported by ads that you can pay to remove for a one-time purchase of $3.99. In addition to removing ads, this purchase also grants a ton of benefits, like unlimited use of items you otherwise would have to watch ads to use and a guarantee of no duplicates in the gachapon when you use it. Paying honestly feels like the only possibly enjoyable way to play UFO99, though I guess it's technically nice to be able to try the game out in its free state before you decide to throw money at it.

There's a lot to like about UFO99 in terms of its concept and style, but I just wish there was more of it and that some of what is there was handled a little better. The game has online multiplayer, for example, but it only works over a local wifi connection so you have to find and be near people you want to play with. Similarly, some of the most interesting moments in UFO99 are its boss fights, but they don't present themselves consistently and their random nature can also mean you fight the same one multiple times in a row. Even with these things being tweaked to let you play online with random players and experience a sequence of bosses, I think UFO99 is still a little light on challenge and complexity, but it would give me more reasons to keep coming back to it than it currently does.

The bottom line

UFO99 is a fun little game, but it feels like it's merely on the cusp of being a standout arcade title as opposed to actually being one. The aesthetics are nice and the fundamentals of the game are sound, but there's just not really enough of it to justify any kind of strong recommendation to play it.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/ufo99-review/