REVIEW: Sixty Second Shooter Prime

This was a difficult review to approach for me. As a rule I’ve devoted most of my gaming life to (often disappointing) AAA ‘blockbuster’ titles. I’ve only recently discovered the wonderful world of the ‘indie game’, and just how much fun these pocket-money games can provide.

So I want to start by making it clear that the score I give a game like Sixty Second Shooter Prime is not in comparison to Watch_Dogs or Battlefield 4. The score firmly relates to how much fun this game is given that it costs less than £4.

Short answer is: A Lot

Any gamer over the age of 30 will get an instant reminder of the old classic Asteroids when they start this up. XboxMAD’s Jack succinctly described it as ‘a battle by the noble triangles to crush the tyranny of the oppressive squares’. Potential need for drug testing aside, he makes a good point. The game doesn’t have any convoluted plot or flashy opening sequences. This is pure distilled Old School gaming joy.

No one cared how Pac Man got stuck in the maze. No one cared why centipedes were attacking a small tank. Equally it doesn’t matter why your gun-toting triangle feels the need to take out its feelings of inadequacy on better-endowed polygons.

This game is about one thing and one thing only; pure, unbridled score-chasing. You have 60 seconds to rack up as high a score as possible by piloting the I.S.S. Isosceles (what…? I like to name my ships) across a series of 2-Dimentional levels, destroying and/or dodging everything that gets thrown at you.

As you play and your skills improve, you’ll unlock new ways of boosting your score- such as being able to start on a later level (which means more -and higher scoring- enemies), or pick up area-effect missiles. There are a whole host of other pick-ups available too, including weapon boosts, a few seconds of invincibility and temporary slowing of time. And…. That’s it.

That is the whole game …and you will be very surprised just how fulfilling that game is. As I’ve already said, the key isn’t surviving for 60 seconds, it’s about getting as huge a score as possible. It’s about the fundamental basis of all games since Pong: Getting your name to the top of the score-board. It just so happens that the scoreboard is now populated by all your friends and followers.

It is genuinely surprising how nuanced the game balance is once you get past the basics. It’s about taking the chance to get to a distant power-up. It’s about the risk/reward of going through the portal to the next level, and so facing harder but more valuable enemies. It’s also about both luck and pure reactions.

The game is also incredibly limited, there are no two ways about that. It is a simple shoot-em-up. No more, no less.

This is not a game you’ll be playing for 5 hours at a time. However, I have found myself playing it a lot. Half an hour before I go out; 20 mins while we are getting our party together before a Battlefield session; 10 mins while I’m waiting for my wife to get home.

The sounds are simple but work well and provide what’s needed; a throbbing soundtrack with explosive sound effects.

The graphics are deliberately minimal. It’s a bold choice, but one that takes some flack from the inevitable comparisons to the Xbox 360 shooter, Geometry Wars. It looks like a game that would have no problem running on your mobile phone, and that is no surprise seeing as this is a game that started life on mobile platforms.
So if the game has flaws, they are the graphical presentation and the limited scope of the game as a whole.

If the game cost £15 or more, these would be serious issues. For the price of £3.99 they’re easy to forgive for the fun game behind them. Sixty Second Shooter Prime is simple, limited, uncomplicated, old-school fun. It isn’t pushing any boundaries, but is worth every penny of the price being asked, and then some.

So pick it up and see if you can take on my awesome score.

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!!!COMPETITION TIME!!!

The awesome Jamie Fristrom of Happion Laboratories has given us a digital copy of Sixty Second Shooter Prime to give to one lucky reader.

So to be in with a chance to win. Follow @XboxMADdotnet on Twitter, and Tweet us your best/funniest/`most obsequious reason as to why you should get the game. Remember to mark your tweet with #MADsssp

Entries must be received before 11pm GMT Sunday 29th June 2014

Good luck!