Going into Xion, I was expecting greatness. A game that bills itself as a “revival of the arcade and shoot ‘em ups of the 1990’s” has got big shoes to fill. And I’ll say that for as long as it was fun, it really accomplished this. I felt like I was playing a life-sized game of Galaga where I was the pilot. As I progressed through the game, however, I felt myself slipping away from the nostalgia of the past and into the boredom of today. The levels became repetitive. The customization I was promised was virtually nonexistent. Galaga got away with it because it was just so satisfying to clear away the enemies row by row, but I couldn’t even get that satisfaction from Xion – the towers, while stationary in world, passed me by with the rest of the terrain.
This leads me to my main criticism of this game: the lack of satisfaction and fulfillment. The trailer for this game is extremely misleading. Two things I was most excited for going into Xion were being able to customize my ship and to destroy the terrain. They sure know their audience, because seeing that in the trailer is exactly what sold me on the concept. At first glance, this seemed like it would be a lot of fun. The truth is that the game is nothing like this. The ship customization is more of a limitation than anything else – I played through both arcade mode and campaign mode and never earned enough credits to put more than 3 guns on my ship, and even that was at the cost of maneuverability. This became a real hindrance in later levels when the difficulty ramped up at a faster rate than I could upgrade my ship. After failing the final level multiple times on hard mode, I fell back to easy mode to find myself still struggling with my measly loadout. With regards to destroying the environment, while the game does use it cleverly sometimes, hiding enemy weak points in the ceiling for you to bust through and destroy, most of the time it’s just annoying. The towers and landscapes of the environment look nice, but considering my lack of guns, the best I could do was avoid them.
The whole game felt like a vicious cycle of bug after poorly implemented concept after bug. If I put my ship near my head, it slows down – sounds great, but the enemies keep firing at full rate, so this just leaves me vulnerable. Enemies can lock onto your ship from anywhere – sounds great, but I can’t see behind me, so I fall victim to a lot of cheap shots, especially during boss fights where the towers stop moving. Many times, at the end of a level, the game simply wouldn’t add the credits I’d collected to my score, which was devastating considering my already wimpy ship. Towards the end of my playthrough, I accidentally unlocked some sort of debug mode which did give me a decent amount of credits to equip myself for the final boss fight, but it shouldn’t take a bug to counteract another bug. Game-breaking bugs such as these make Xion feel like the developers didn’t care enough to test their own game. If you’re looking for a game like this one, I would say give it time for the game to be fixed until it’s in a playable state.
If you’re curious what Xion looks like in action, here is a video of the final level. For a “final boss fight,” this was pretty underwhelming. Take note of how small my ship is, how little it damages the environment, and how most of the fight is just me waiting for the enemy to appear. The boss fight starts at 3:00. (Note that since this game has no storyline, this is more of a strategy guide than a spoiler. Watch at your own discretion.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR91NPuGLWE
+Exciting premise
+Starts off fun
-Little to no satisfaction
-Steep difficulty curve
-Noticeably buggy
-More expensive than it’s worth
Xion is out now and available for Oculus Rift in the Oculus Store. Also available for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on Steam.
I am an aspiring game designer looking to explore the philosophy behind game creation. Some of my favorite games include Overwatch, Super Smash Bros, Portal, and Beat Saber.
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