[h1] Fun for a few hours, with nice presentation and a comical B Movie appeal, but there are a few bugs which affect accuracy and the reloading feels frustrating [/h1]
The Martians have invaded and it's your responsibility to defend your property and do the decent thing and join the fight.
Martian Panic is an on-rail arcade shooter with eight different levels spanning the globe. Each level has an introductory scene, along with cut scenes during play to break up the shooting. There are six characters to choose from with their own personalities and things to say during play.
The game takes a few hours to complete, but there are three different skill levels affecting hit damage, enemy strength, and the number of continues allowed, and each skill level has a high score for that particular scene. Leader boards are shown for your own high score, the Top 10, local, and your friend's high scores. Your score is boosted if you can achieve some or all of the aims outlined at the start, like destroying a certain percentage of property, protecting all civilians, or achieving a mega score.
There are also achievements to aim for and gallery pictures to unlock by completing the criteria set.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3002179356
[h1]🤔Overall Impressions🤔[/h1]
[quote][h2][b]Martian Panic is enjoyable for a while but I worry about its longevity considering its high price tag. It is quite easy to complete the eight levels on offer, especially at cadet level where there are unlimited retries.
Raising a level to Ranger does make things more difficult but this is where the frustration levels increase because now and again hits don't register at all. I have shot an alien fifty times and he hasn't died. I am not sure if it is a bug or very bad hit detection but it is definitely present, and you will lose a life because of it. This makes the experience a little frustrating, especially when you have limited retries, and there are other frustrations that compound this feeling.
Reloading is a constant pain. If you don't remember to reload (and this has to be done on the keyboard as for some reason it cannot be done using the mouse) the gun automatically reloads which takes a few seconds. If your attention is on the screen it is easy to miss noticing when your ammo is low, and this can often lead to deaths as you are completely vulnerable during this time. If you have two weapons present you can switch between them when ammo is low and this works quite nicely. Some guns are much better than others and have more capacity, so reloading is less annoying, but if you only have one gun it usually only has six bullets.
New guns, extra lives, and upgrades are revealed when you either escort a civilian to safety or shoot a certain piece of property, like a crate or postbox. There a few issues with this. It isn't always obvious which items are destructible, and because some items were destructible from far away but others were not, I ended up wasting loads of ammo on things which I hit but weren't destroyed. If you do reveal an upgrade you must shoot it to acquire it but if you are out of ammo and it starts reloading, often the screen moves on before you have chance to shoot it. Civilians reveal upgrades but then linger around and it is very easy to shoot the civilian whilst trying to shoot the upgrade!
It is a shame because otherwise the game is fun to play. I enjoyed the different locales and the B-movie aesthetics and camp, cheesy stories. Animations are nice, with bold and colourful characters and enemies, and there are enough different enemies, scenes, and variety in guns to keep it feeling fresh. Unfortunately, although the cutscenes are entertaining, the in game cutscenes cannot be skipped and this does feel annoying when you have to restart and watch it all over again.
Leader boards take an age to load and sometimes so long that I have given up, so there is definitely an issue there, but it's nice to see so many of them, and of course, achievements are always welcomed along with the gallery pictures which are quite difficult to unlock.
I think for the price, and the fact that there are issues and bugs here and there, I cannot recommend it currently. Definitely try it out before you buy using the Steam refund policy though. [/b][/h2][/quote]
[h1]🎬Gameplay Video🎬[/h1]
https://youtu.be/pR_TWEUEB7A
[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/] Follow [b]IndieGems[/b] [/url] and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41039956/][b]Indie Blast![/b] [/url] for more reviews like this one. [/quote]
