Oh man. It’s Jupiter Strike. I knew I would have to face this day sooner or later. It’s now time to write this review. In Jupiter Strike, you fly a spacecraft through outer space while dodging enemy fire and taking down some ships of your own. The game seems typical, right? WRONG! This game is a lot worse than most typical games. The graphics are passable, but everything else in the game is terrible. The sound, controls, storyline, gameplay, and replay value, well, for lack of a better word, SUCK!
Graphics
This is, by far, the best portion of the game. I remember when I first played this game, I was blown away by the graphics. All of the spacecrafts are modeled in full 3D. Many people would probably say this game looks exactly like Starfox 64. I agree. But that’s not a bad thing at all. The frame rate is also remarkable. The screen can be filled with up to twenty ships at one time, and there is no slow down in the frame rate. The environments in Jupiter Strike are just as good, even though most of it is just a background of outer space. There are many asteroids and space stations just waiting for you to crash into them. But be warned, everything is downhill from here.
Rating: 8/10
Sound
Ugh! The sound in this game is awful! The music resembles MIDI music from the early nineties. For anyone not familiar with MIDI music, just think of the music for the old NES and Atari games. The sound effects are really just as bad. I swear, I only counted about ten different sound effects in this game. There are explosions, missiles, laser beams, and force fields. That’s it. You may think that’s all that’s necessary in a space shooter game, but the developers could’ve offered a little variety. Are they that uncreative?
Rating: 1/10
Control
Well, you really don’t have much control in this game. Your ship is constantly going forward, no matter what you do. All you can do is move your ship up, down, left, or right. Boring. There are only two camera views available: cockpit view and third person view. Neither one is good. The square button fires your slow, but hard-hitting homing lasers. The X button fires your fast but weak machine-gun lasers. And there are no power-ups whatsoever. What a dull game.
Rating: 2/10
Gameplay
This is by far the most frustrating part of the game. First, the computer AI is simply relentless and unbeatable. I was only able to get to the third level, and there is supposedly around 13 levels. Almost all of the enemies’ missiles are heat-seeking missiles, so avoiding all of them is impossible. Then if you’re able to survive the first two levels of this, there is a devastating boss at the end of level 2. What makes it worse is that there is absolutely no Save option, so after every Game Over, you have to start back at level 1. Wow, this game just keeps on getting worse by the sentence.
Rating: 1/10
Replay Value
You can’t even beat the game, so is replay value even possible. I guess playing the first couples of levels over and over may count, but who would want to do that? What was Konami thinking when they published this game?
Rating: 1/10
Overall
Overall, burn this game. The graphics may be nice, but everything else about this game is garbage. Oh yeah, I didn’t even mention the sorry attempt of a story line. That would’ve received a one anyway. Um, if you want to experience a little bit of gaming hell, then by all means, get Jupiter Strike.
