Xeno Crisis
» System: Mega Drive (tested) Neo Geo AES, Dreamcast, PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One
» Buy it from: Online, shop.bitmapbureau.com » Buy it for: £55 (Mega Drive) £14.99 - £199 (other versions)
From the moment you start playing Bitmap Bureau’s new game it’s obvious that it’s something a little special. It starts off with some great looking cutscenes, setting up the flimsy ‘us against the aliens’ story and then gets straight into the action. And what ridiculous action it is.
At its heart, Xeno Crisis is an arena shooter in the style of Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV. You’ll enter an area and won’t be able to leave it until every single alien has been eliminated. You’ll need all your wits about you in order to succeed and if we’re honest, a six-button joypad is useful as well. Xeno Crisis shines with a friend, as you can handily revive each other, which massively improves your chances of success.
On a three-button pad, B takes care of firing (keep it held down to fire in that direction), A lets you perform an evasive roll, and C chucks grenades. However, when the B button is held down, the other two buttons rotate your fire left or right. It’s not an elegant solution for multi-directional firing, but works well enough. Fortunately, a six-button pad completely
eliminates this niggle, so you can easily fire in whatever direction you need, as well as having instant access to those handy rolls and grenades.
And you’ll need them, because Xeno Crisis is one tough mother of a game, requiring your shooting skills to be in tip-top condition as you run around the levels picking up dog-tags and stranded hostages. Interestingly, your ammo is limited to 100 shots (it can be upgraded), meaning you’ll need to seek out more whenever it pops up on-screen (typically when you’re down to your last few bullets). Taking down the game’s gigantic bosses is not only immensely satisfying, but also takes you to a useful upgrade screen where you can spend those dog-tags to upgrade health, weapons, ammo and even gain extra continues.
Xeno Crisis will be an excellent addition to anyone’s Mega Drive library, and is arguably one of the best arena shooters on the system. It’s a frantic, frenetic blaster that reminds us of the good old days.
>> 87%
Score