 |
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
|||||||
 | |||||||||
|
Monday, January 18, 2010.
by Adam Dileva
Since Geometry Wars made the Twin-stick shooters (Left stick to move your ship and Right to fire in any direction) popular, there has been a slew of these types of top down shooters, though none really reaching that Geometry Wars popularity or success. Premium Agency is the developer of this new title called Death By Cube and it is backed and published by Square Enix. Much like other games in this genre, the objective is to strategically defeat your enemies whilst staying alive, but of course every game has their own twists and adds something new to be fresh and unique. The unique take with Death By Cube is that you are trying to destroy an army of cube shaped enemies that are filled with red oil on a collection of different maps with a numerous amount of weapons and strategies. Surprisingly enough, there actually is a story to this game unlike many others that simply want you to progress levels or gain high scores. You are LEO; a robot that is awakened and realize that you’ve list your memory. The only instinct you have when awoken is that you must reboot the robot SELSIE to hopefully gather your memories back of what has happened. This is LEO’s mission and sets forth only to find that the world has been filled with a large army of aggressive enemy robots trying to destroy you. It’s up to you to press on and find out what happened all while spilling each cubed robot’s red oil all over the place. You control LEO just like any other Twin-stick shooter with the Left stick moving your robot and the Right shooting in whatever direction you point to. Every enemy is a cube or slight variant there of and there will be a barrage of them coming out for you. Some enemies don’t pose much threat, then there are other very small ones that swarm and surround you; others will even shoot back at you. Much like Geometry Wars, each different enemy has its own style of offence and defense. The bosses are quite surprisingly large and will require some finesse to defeat as well.
Instead of simply passing a level and moving on, you are graded and rewarded coins based on your skill and play style. Do better to earn enough coins which are then used to unlock new levels and upgrades. The issue with this system is that an average play won’t always gain you enough coins to be progressively moving on; so there will be some levels that you will have to replay quite a few times just to gain enough coins to move on to the new level. If you spend cash on an upgrade, it’ll take even longer for you to collect the required amount of coins to move to the next level. Eventually you’ll try and avoid upgrades so that you aren’t forced to replay levels over and over for a small account of coins, so you can see where the repetition and annoyance sets in trying to balance upgrades vs. progression. Death By Cube also incorporates a couple different mechanics that do make it feel fresh and interesting. Using Left Trigger will cause LEO to dash very quickly in the direction the Left stick is pointing. Doing this will cause enemies in close vicinity to become temporarily confused and stunned for a minute and even stop shooting. Thus enemies become easier targets to shoot or you can get away and regroup away from them for a short time. If you hold down the Right Trigger you will have a shield around you for a few seconds and when this is activated you will catch any bullets or lasers shot at you. Letting go and aiming with the Right stick will reflect and shoot these caught bullets back at your enemies. This technique is a necessity later on to simply survive, but the trick is that you can’t hold the shield up for more than a few seconds at a time or else you will blow up. As you kill more enemies with style and techniques like these, enemies will drop items that can be picked up to boost your offence (like double shot) and defense. There are multiple upgraded robots you can purchase with your precious coins should you want more offense, defense, speed or other attributes; though I like the homing shots. It makes it a little more interesting to try and complete a level with a style of robot you wouldn’t normally play. As of this time, I was unable to get any multiplayer matches in but Square Enix has listed the game as having up to 8 players with online versus and co-op matches over Xbox Live or locally. The difficulty starts off pretty steep early on so I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns some people off, but it’s what we’ve come to expect from Square; a compelling challenge. It’s an interesting take on the Twin-stick shooter genre and while the story really isn’t anything special or engrossing, at least it has one unlike the majority of others. At 800 MS points, it’s completely worth it if you are a fan of Geometry Wars or anything like it and with all the unlockables and medals, you’ll be playing for awhile. Just remember, it’s not blood, it’s red oil!
Overall: 8.2 / 10 Gameplay: 8.3 / 10 Visuals: 7.2 / 10 Sound: 7.5 / 10 | |||||||||
 | |||||||||
| Write your own review of Death By Cube. Click Here. |
|
||||||||||
|
Xbox 360 Titles: 817 Xbox 360 Arcade Titles: 448 Xbox Titles: 832 Registered Members: 42,523 Forum Posts: 734,328 Staff Reviews: 1,064 Member Reviews: 10,339 News Articles: 10,941 Screenshots: 24,444 Xbox 360 Achievements: 36,161 Xbox 360 Faceplates: 2,016 Cheat Codes: 1,706
|
|||||||||||||||
|
1. phuture 909 - 123,212 2. Unreal - 122,015 3. Symmetric-XBA - 89,725 4. tacohead - 80,991 5. Nato King-XBA - 60,413 6. 12buckmafia-XBA - 57,474 7. Variation-XBA - 54,765 8. Timmy Bauer - 51,965 9. Steeps5 - 34,799 10. Silent-XBA - 33,275 11. Enamelized420-XBA - 32,341 12. Kamshaft-XBA - 25,234 13. angeto - 24,628 14. oddjob428 - 23,850 15. biggav4000 - 23,826 16. Symmetrics Love - 22,540 17. thAshAdyOne - 19,865 18. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 16,170 19. Alx1138-XBA - 15,610 20. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 15,041 21. Tampad - 15,009 22. Ricepuppet - 14,722 23. Professor Kaos - 14,645 24. Bakeman - 14,082 25. Soda Jones - 11,958 |
|||||||||||||||
| (Top 150) | |||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
1. l Maximus l - 15,771 2. Variation-XBA - 13,494 3. Soda Jones - 4,423 4. Shadow20002 - 4,258 5. Nato King-XBA - 4,119 6. Sam-XBA - 4,111 7. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 3,679 8. Fargoth - 3,575 9. Silent-XBA - 3,410 10. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 3,212 11. DocHoliday78 - 3,089 12. vman - 2,355 13. thAshAdyOne - 2,328 14. Bakeman - 2,076 15. Kamshaft-XBA - 1,859 16. Symmetric-XBA - 1,639 17. Unreal - 1,550 18. HaZarD SFD-XBA - 1,351 19. Enamelized420-XBA - 1,290 20. Professor Kaos - 1,152 21. Steeps5 - 1,079 22. BigJosh359 - 971 23. Motoko - 917 24. EMX - 806 25. MoonTar - 291 26. Symmetrics Love - 171 27. scozzard - 162 28. Ricepuppet - 138 29. Alx1138-XBA - 131 30. pierrevincy - 131 31. oddjob428 - 104 32. wasabisabi - 102 33. tacohead - 98 34. Timmy Bauer - 93 35. angeto - 84 36. phuture 909 - 78 37. 12buckmafia-XBA - 51 38. Tampad - 51 39. blueamcat - 46 40. biggav4000 - 45 41. kaori30 - 31 42. Ed Hunter - 16 43. The Mattbox - 15 44. Pepsi - 6 45. grantzy05 - 5 46. legend80 - 5 47. DBMB - 2 48. ZorgX - 2 49. Verified OG - 1 50. paulvincent - 1 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
1. Yellowlab - 121 2. Variation-XBA - 115 3. mattgame - 95 4. Highlite23-XBA - 89 5. Young_Fledgling - 82 6. Sam-XBA - 80 7. The Jackal - 74 8. Megaherz *RAGE* - 74 9. xj74 - 73 10. Shadow20002 - 67 11. CrazyCougar - 66 12. mrmp3 - 65 13. xdragon - 62 14. oddworld20-3000 - 59 15. Silent-XBA - 59 16. Kamshaft-XBA - 57 17. BlindSniper - 56 18. (ScArab) - 56 19. natewebb - 56 20. Marc - 53 21. Symmetric-XBA - 49 22. Whisper - 47 23. Xbox Masta 4 - 43 24. Sharky53 - 42 25. Y2D - 42 26. Lord Vivic - 41 27. JediMasterChief - 40 28. adzmullz1 - 39 29. thunder0810 - 39 30. Ninjermy - 38 31. Blind-RazoR - 38 32. Alx1138-XBA - 38 33. MixMasta - 38 34. kenji - 37 35. DaGameBoy - 36 36. JayMan36 - 36 37. Liquid Gears - 35 38. murken - 33 39. mentat - 33 40. RichVGS - 32 41. 12buckmafia-XBA - 32 42. wweomaniac - 31 43. asammw - 31 44. BillyDKid - 30 45. Folgerboy-XBA - 30 46. George89 - 30 47. pvsurfer03 - 29 48. CrazyKane - 28 49. colosso - 28 50. BIGHARV - 28 |
|
© 2000-2011 XboxAddict.com - All rights reserved. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Xbox is a registered trademark of Microsoft. XboxAddict.com is not affiliated with Microsoft. |
Made in Canada