Devastator
The best twin-stick shooters make your eyes water. Not so much by dazzling you with bright colours and particle confetti, but by ramping up to such an intense pitch that you daren’t blink lest that split second be the difference between swerving a high-velocity projectile and colliding with it. Devastator, the latest release from the prolific Luke Schneider, has all of that. Though not brand-new, this revamp of a 2015 mobile game has been sufficiently refined to feel daisy-fresh on its console debut – which offers a valuable reminder that virtual sticks will never match up to the real thing.
Against a blue-grid-lined backdrop, your goal is to blast waves of orange viruses in the time-honoured fashion – though it sometimes pays to lift that right thumb, since you can move quicker when you’re not firing. This charges up your turbo ability, which boosts your shot rate for a short period. Yet particularly in Quadrants mode, which gets hectic extremely quickly, you rarely have room to stop shooting. That is, unless you lure enemies in and let off a powerful blast: this pink-purple smartbomb destroys anything within a wide radius, keeping you alive a little longer.
To earn a blast you need to collect the energy your opponents leave behind, which naturally involves taking risks by darting in and out of crowded areas. You’re allowed to take one hit, but once your shield is down the next is fatal; only after you’ve picked up four shield pods will you have that extra margin of error. Racing to pick these up is dangerous, too, though it’s worth it: you earn double points while shielded. And in Sectors mode (five sets of 11 stages, with Schneider flooring the accelerator for the finale of each), time is of the essence: defeat a wave of enemies well below the par time and you get a huge points boost, with the difficulty level and percentage of energy points gathered also factoring into your score, as well as a no-hit bonus.
While it’s the kind of game where you’ll thrive by playing on instinct, there’s more to think about, from larger energy collectables that offer brief respite by stalling enemies to a rare ‘interrupt’ pickup that slows the action to a crawl. Elsewhere, the three different weapon types (Reflex fires the farthest and its shots bounce; Spread fans out your shots; Vulcan fires fastest) are perhaps not quite different enough from each other, while a third mode, Cycles, combines Quadrants and Sectors to mildly underwhelming effect. But these are minor blemishes. While Schneider may have moved onto 3D physics-based destruction in more recent years, there’s something to be said for the enduring appeal of a 2D twin-stick shooter – and Devastator is a good one.