Reviews - Shatari

This one is a classic to end all classics in the RPG/FPS field. It offers great writing, creative level design, and a massive variety of ways to play the game. Are you the sort to mow down everyone in your path, pick them off with a sniper rifle, subdue them non-lethally, or the sort who just ghosts by them? No matter what your style, you'll find the tools and the skills available to play it your way.

The only part that hasn't aged well is the combat, but that is easily overlooked by playing on the realistic setting.

This game still appears to be getting updates, so this review will hopefully become outdated soon. The game currently has some promise: the art style is cute and does the job, and if you like arcade style shoot-em ups then it delivers a decent experience at first. There are four major flaws though, that I truly hope will be patched out:
First, the music is repetitive. I like the song, but it loops endlessly and grates after about the third time around.
Second, you don't shoot where you're aiming. In fact, the aiming is amazingly limited and completely unintuitive. Don't give the player a crosshair if the bullets will only fire on a weird fixed arc in a few cardinal directions; it's just annoying. In fact, the greatest source of difficulty is fighting the controls so that you can shoot the zombies that are slowly moving towards you.
Third, switching weapons is buggy and there doesn't seem to be any way to go back to the pistol. If you press the switch weapon button then you're playing slots on which weapon it will end on, which is unhelpful if you need something specific.
Finally, the collision detection is terrible. Getting caught on geometry is a major hindrance and the only reason you'll even get his in the early stages. Trees and rubble have an invisible wall around them that will trip you up at a great distance, and maneuvering around them is always a chore. It's especially glaring because the controls are otherwise responsive; you get used to your character going where you expect them too, and then suddenly they stop in midair with nothing around them and a zombie horde getting in some free hits.

At the end of the day I have to settle on a 4/10 for now, with the hopes that these will be addressed soon in a patch. I'll probably come back to the game again in a few months to see if they've fixed anything, but for now it's still too early to really enjoy it around the flaws.

If this were a beta product I would recommend it, as it has the skeleton of a great game. Sadly, it's far from done and I don't think it's going to get any additional content added. The ability to create custom scenarios and design your own ships, the addition of more standard ships, or even the ability to play larger battles would all add a ton of millage, but as it is it's really not worth buying.

The graphics are okay, and if you're not trying to break them the scripted events tell an okay story at first. Once you join up with the super secret good guys things go south pretty fast, with some really boring story, some really bad level design, gimmicky fights, and AI companions who not only do nothing, they are obvious in that they do nothing. If a monster gets stuck on geometry, your allies will stand and shoot it for ages, highlighting the fact that they can not deal damage. This is a pretty common occurrence, so it constantly spoils the immersion. (Note that their grenades are still lethal though, and they do not acknowledge the player's location when they chuck them.)

All told, this should have been a great game, but it ultimately turns into a boring slog with no highlights. The ending scene is the most interesting part of the game, but since they'll never actually make a sequel it's a rather hollow promise of what might have come. Or what should have been in the first place.