Mutant Storm Empire (yes, the sequel to Mutant Storm, if you can’t guess somehow) is a new arena shooter available on Xbox Live Arcade. Taking a cue from Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV, MSE focuses mostly on blasting enemies in all directions at a quick pace. Carving out paths among swarms of enemies, blasting big bosses, and avoiding kamikaze death is the formula, and it’s held to fairly tightly.
Most of MSE is a room to room affair, 6 rooms per level, with 16 levels in 4 stages. 4 levels are an exception, and work more along the lines of a horizontal shooter. Rooms have obstacles, monster entrances of varying sorts, and sometimes hazards. It’s a formula that can get repetitive, and it does at points in MSE, but generally enemies and level layouts are fresh enough to keep players interested. Each level allows players to take 6 hits, and gives them a limited supply of ridiculously powerful super weapon fire, which can take a boss down in a split second on easier difficulties. Most stages have unique enemies to their environments, though individual levels often share certain types of enemies. Mid-bosses are fairly common, and levels generally end on a boss, with a big one at the end of a stage.
Mutant Storm Empire tries to set itself apart by focusing on combos and high scores. Killing a certain number of an enemy will result in a bonus to the multiplier, which is capped by difficulty settings, and resets when players take damage. Obviously this means the highest scores are possible on the hardest settings, but getting that level of combo is going to be extremely difficult. The system is a good attempt, but doesn’t always work, frankly. While in early stages, it’s easy enough to just shoot purple or green tanks, for example, going back and forth as the counter hits zero, later stage have enemies that fire projectiles which are counted as their own kind of creature. You may only need to kill two of a larger enemy type to get a combo boost, but it spits out clusters of small enemies, which you may have to kill 40 of to get a combo. Good luck getting that, since they’re coming in groups of 8, and form a shield around the tougher enemy and really attempt to guarantee you’ll hit one of them between killing two of the big guy.
The pacing is a bit slow, for my enjoyment. Usually games of this nature are frantic crazy affairs that leave you running on pure adrenaline and twitching, while MSE is a bit more tactical for those looking to rack up points, and a bit plain for those who don’t care. Then, there are the few levels which simply stream enemies at players, which are lots of twitchy fun, but likely to endlessly annoy people going for score as one stray shot will reset the kill count for the next boost. Either style of player will have fun, but the game doesn’t seem to find the right balance. Despite, it still remains a generally enjoyable festival of destruction.
Graphically, everything has a bit of a glow and feels more than a touch radioactive, which one would deem appropriate for mutants. There’s neither sense of setting nor scale, but there’s enough explosive prettiness to not be concerned with it, and usually plenty of enemies and projectiles to not stop and enjoy the sights. The audio is about the same. Lasers, pew pew, decent music for shooter background, and plenty of kaboom, and some sounds run through a few distortion filters to sound extra unnatural.
On the whole it’s not a particularly great game, but it’s fairly fun and tries a few interesting things. The difficulty is inconsistent as is the pacing, which takes away from things. Particularly of note, the fourth set of stages is absolutely savage in difficulty even on the easiest settings, despite the rest of the game having been a veritable cakewalk to that point. The levels which are a continuous sidescroll(of which there’s one per stage, where the level keeps moving and the player must stay between two laser beams for no apparent reason) are a bit harder, and a bit boring. The one on the fourth stage is controller-smashingly difficult and unfun, so much so I started to really wonder if I cared about finishing the game at all. I did, but it’s the kind of level that requires memorization or extra-fucking-sensory perception. The difficulty boost is right out of every 1994 arcade game, so if you’re okay with that, you’ll do fine with this.
Mutant Storm Empire gets 3 of 5 canes. Average shooter that will do the job if you’re hard up for an arena fix, certainly, but don’t expect any crazy Smash TV or Robotron action. If you crave combos and lots of targets, grab the demo, and you’ll know fast if you should make the purchase.
