Forums > Submission Feedback > overdrive's Override review

And… man, I'm not even two paragraphs in and I'm already stretching for adjectives you haven’t read dozens of times before in reviews for similar games.

Yup, that's probably why I haven't done a shoot-em-up review in a year: a ton of them are sooo samey to where it's difficult to write for one. A game would have to have something so weird, broken, or gimmicky for me to even write a review around it. Still, you did a good job writing about why this one feels generic, especially with your top three angle.

I think for me, this was the first (at least in a long time; but I did have a long hiatus between the 2003-04 period and more recently where it was rare that I did any shmup reviews) game that really hit me with that other than (I think) one of the SMS or GG Power Strike/Aleste games where I did a gimmicky review that was about as much me ranting about personal issues and boredom than talking about the game.

For me, there's always something interesting to talk about with these games, whether because they did something really good or really bad that I can focus on. Here, though, it was more of a "well, there were a couple neat functions...but man, there's nothing interesting here". Just a paint-by-numbers episode of competence, nothing more and nothing less.

About the only two things worth mentioning that I didn't put into the review are: 1. In what wasn't a surprise whatsoever, the last level was a boss rush. Because boss rushes are a mandatory thing in any shooter not going for "completely original concept". 2. The final boss is a robotic beetle-like thing (another generic, robotic creation) that has two things going up and down on the sides of it firing lasers and stuff. Which would be effective except they're about a third of the way inside the screen and there are no walls, so you can sort of perch in a corner and not only be immune to the attacks of one of them...but also use it as a shield from some of the main guy's bullets. BRILLIANT!!! (I say with sarcasm).

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle