Astrodogs

I've played several Star Fox clones/"spiritual successors", and so far, they nearly all miss the mark, and this game is no exception. Movement feels very loose, making it hard to aim precisely. This might be better with a mouse, but with a gamepad, no dice. This could be compensated for by having a lock-on shot like Star Fox, but your primary weapon lack this. Instead, lock-on is relegated to one of your secondary weapons, which are limited by your energy. Considering how hard it is to aim precisely, this feels like a huge misstep. The visuals are okay, but it's a bit hard to see enemies against the background, especially if you're playing on a smaller screen (like the Steam Deck). I do appreciate that it's aiming more for Star Fox 64 visuals rather than the SNES original. Some of the other mechanics are interesting additions. The laser provides a good focused damage option, with the bombs working on an area as expected. I do think it's a mistake having all the secondary weapons tied to the same resource, your energy meter, is a mistake. It'd be better to have a count for bombs/missiles, and maybe a cooldown or regenerating energy meter for the laser and shield. Having the barrel roll be a parry for normal shots is interesting, but it's kind of a pain to utilize to best effect considering moving your ship changes your aim, so aiming at enemies while parrying shots is needlessly difficult. Overall, I think this just doesn't quite reach the level it needs for me to recommend it. Compared to Star Fox 64, it's definitely a no, but even taken on its own merits, it's just not quite good enough. It's close, and I'd like to see a sequel with more refined mechanics, but this just barely gets a thumbs down. ETA: At the urging of the developer, I gave the game a second try. This time, I decided to try mouse and keyboard to see if that would improve the experience. It ended up being both better and worse. Aiming with the mouse feels like you're dragging the aiming reticle through molasses. Because you can adjust the mouse sensitivity in the options, you can definitely aim better because you can slow down the movement, but it feels like there's resistance to getting the reticle where you want it, especially if you're making larger movements. The mouse also controls the ship movement, which feels like there's even more resistance, so it can be very difficult to get the ship where you want it when you need to dodge obstacles or fly through rings. Using the instinct mode helps, as the aiming becomes more snappy, but I constantly felt like I was running out of energy for it, and honestly, you should not have to use a limited resource to be able to make aiming feel accurate to your mouse movements. There are several changes I'd like to see to the game that I think would help immensely without drastically altering the balance of the game mechanics. 1) Sharpen up mouse aiming. When I move my mouse, my cursor should move at a reasonable pace, not like it's being dragged through mud. 2) Provide an analog stick sensitivity option like the mouse sensitivity option. The current analog stick aiming is much, much too fast to make aiming even remotely reliable without leaning on the crutch of instinct mode constantly. Another option might be to slow down the default movement/aiming, but add a button (LB or RB maybe) to hold to let you move faster if you need to move or aim all the way across the screen right away. 3) Maybe add a slow regen to the instinct and weapon energy bars. One thing I noticed with the first boss is that once I ran out of them, there didn't seem to be any way to get more, which was especially frustrating with one of the characters repeatedly telling me to use my instinct. A slow regen would allow those options to be available in situations like that without giving you so much energy that you could just use them 100% of the time. I still can't recommend the game in its current state, but I do think with some or all of these improvements, I'd happily give it another try and I expect I'd be able to change my mind.

[h1]A review from a disappointed creature unblinded by doggies.[/h1] You can just skip reading this and instead just look at this https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1301230/achievements Edit 1: Please note I am told by a user named Vampirod, who I guess is a dev, that they made a mistake in adding the achievements or they were just added after the game launched so these statics might not be right. I am still kinda' surprised they are so low though. Edit 2: Okay the achievements are gone after I pointed this out. Very strange?? Look there is a reason less than 5% of players (as of writing this) have beaten the soft endng of the game and just 2% have gone through the whole thing, statics like this are harrowing to see as a game dev. [b]The other game by this dev, Broken Reality, is a much better game I can recommend most people play.[/b] [b]Cool bits[/b] +Interesting graphics. +Very colorful. +Nice cast. +Okay voice acting on some of the characters. +Controller controls seem fine. [b]Bad bits[/b] -Difficultly is too high with no options for this. -No accessibility options, it's hard for my eyes to pick things out as the visuals are nice but a mess for my bad eyes. -Forced to make the game harder for yourself to unlock new skins for your ship, locked behind score rankings. -Nothing you do will decrease difficultly or improve ship durability/firepower/ability. There are no upgrades, no check points, nothing. -If you die you go back to the start of the level. -Devs decided less levels higher difficulty was the answer. -Mouse and keyboard controls are awful. -Buggy menus with the controller. -Some of the voice acting is too much, bad, or to much random chatter and tonal whiplash. -Character tonal whiplash. It just isn't fun. Overall though for a game that looks pretty casual and used to call itself that (based on reading reviews it was previously billed as a casual game or a chill game) it is not. The game is hard, there is no difficulty settings, there aren't really much settings for anything at all, it feels very raw. [b]A few more details below:[/b] I played the first two levels over and over because you have to get "A" rank at least to unlock the next ship, I really wanted to see if each ship played different. [b]This was a mistake, they're just skins as far as I can tell as I unlocked the Pizza ship and it was just visually different.[/b] It was a waste of time but whatever, I wanted to know right? I get to the third level and I just keep dying, the game urges you to get a high score but the result is trying to do so makes the game even more difficult so I just say okay and focus on survival, still dying. I'm an hour in and I figured this isn't getting much better so I'm just refunding it now. As sad as this is going to sound, there is a YouTube video of this game and all bosses, I'm just going to watch that. The game doesn't respect my time or offer options to make things easier so screw it.

Really incredible art style and fun game mechanics. Definitely recommend for anybody that is looking for a rail shooter or Star Fox-like game with retro aesthetics but modern game design sensibilities.

Buenas 🤗🤗🤗 como están? Recién yo estaba mirando la lista de juegos quebtengo en steam y me olvide este jueguito. No porqué no me gustó. Es solo que recibí un par de juegos a probar y tuve que hacer también vídeos de gameplay. Ahora me concentro sobre esta reseña 😊😊 Que decir, que decir 🤔? Ahhhhh siiiii Te gusta los rails shooter tipo star Fox y mientras de tener a un zorro, tenemos a sus primos => los perros 😍😍😍😍 La calidad gráfica es buena, es casi de tipo dibujo. No se falta de tener una compu de la NASA para hacerle funcionar. Estoy casi seguro que con una compu del estado, podría andar. La historia es muy minimalista,  somos los buenos.... hay que destruir a los enemigos etc... No quiero hacer un spoiler jajaja Lo que me ENCANTÓ en este juego son las músicas. Porqué completan muy bien cuando estás jugando. Era mi primera muy buena sorpresa. La secunda sorpresa es que al final el juego no es tan linear. Cierto es siempre de frente, pero podes elegir la altitud de pelea ; en el sentido que hay enemigos a destruir todo el tiempo. Pero mientras de estar siempre en el cielo (por ejemplo), puedes bajar y llegar al nivel de los edificios. Para mi este juego es una mezcla en un star Fox y un space invader. Pero bien , cuando escribo bien es que es bien 😅, dinámico. Perdí varias veces, pero me dio la gana de seguir y buscar lo que hay después. Use el juego con un mando Xbox series y me funcionó bastante bien. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Verdicto  : Astrodogs no tiene la pretensión de ser o de querer reemplazar un juego (tipo star Fox). Con sus diseños de dibujo y por supuesto los personajes que son perros me han seducido casi en el momento. Ni hablar de la banda sonora,  sobre gusta la música electrónica.... te va encantar el juego 😊😊😊😊 La nota final sería un 16/20. Buen precio, juego correcto,  musicas en el juego buenas, diseños gráficos buenos. No encuentre algunos problemas en el juego. Quizás a veces su dificultad 😅😅 Les dejo el enlace de la vídeo que hecho en YouTube  : https://youtu.be/HbAp9duyyPU

[h1]Experienced on the HP Reverb G2 using the Oasis Driver for Windows Mixed Reality[/h1] You can view my VR gameplay here: https://youtu.be/fg-lf7yRPrQ Yes, you can play Astrodogs in VR using the VR mod by Astien with full motion controller support. It's almost like playing a Xortex clone. Keep in mind, this is a free VR mod made by one developer, so it's not quite on the same level as an officially VR supported game, but it is very darn close to it. It's basically like holding the ship in your hand (motion controller) and also aiming with it. Keep in mind, you currently have to edit configuration to enable the hand gesture. You probably will also need to edit the config to adjust the controller X,Y,Z position. I had to change Y position to 13.0 on my HP Reverb G2. Game is best played in VR IMO. It's a fun challenge. If you already own Astrodogs and a VR headset, I think it's a no brainer to download this free VR mod. Search for VR mods by Astien to find it. [b]VR Rating 9/10.[/b] [quote]I bought this game! If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator group [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR]Oculus Rift Reviews.[/url][/quote]

If you've been waiting for a Star Fox game for a while Astro Dogs is a great way to satisfy that itch. The most exciting aspect of this game is the gameplay itself. Astro Dogs brings some really interesting mechanics like being able to slow down time and target enemies in a peripheral view. Most levels have a cool aesthetic that is very vaporware at times and also reminiscent of older Nintendo 64 or Sega Dreamcast games which is something I love. There were two levels that I found a bit confusing and frustrating at times due to the saturation of elements on the screen, the "Sattelite" and "Jungle" levels. The boss battles overall are tricky at the beginning but once you understand what to do you should have no problem beating them. The game's menus would benefit from a general menu bar that contains all the sections at once to avoid getting lost between screens. The game has very cool music that fits every level. Regarding its story, Astro Dogs has a charismatic set of characters that don't take themselves too seriously. It's almost as if you are watching The Office but in spaceships. This game has a lot of replayability. There are tons of unlockables depending on your score, like completely new ships and skins. It also has a true ending if you manage to get the secret symbols. 

Just like real life, the dogs never stfu. Just a bunch of inane chatter you'll have to torment yourself with every time you try a level over. You can turn it off though. (Edit: You can, turn down the volume though, doesn't fix the fact they hog the lower part of the screen with pointless banter.) With a bit more polish, this would of been a pretty good game. It's got heart, I'll give it that much. But it just seems like they had to finish up for some sort of deadline and called it good at the end. Also screw that crab with the glittery dust you can't seem to avoid for some reason.