Titan Attacks!
Titan Attacks! from Puppy Games is an homage to arcade titles of old. This time around though you’ll be reliving all your wonderful Space Invaders memories but whilst the game may look simple on the surface there’s slightly more than meets the eye to this title. That’s a good job too, because on face value you’re still that tiny defence vehicle moving from side to side whilst desperately trying to hold off the hordes of descending alien invaders.
Aside from the standard score-attack gameplay, Titan Attacks! has an interesting upgrade system in place. Every time you shoot an alien you’ll make money and at the end of each round you’ll have the chance to replenish your shields, buy smart bombs, increase the power of your weapon, increase weapon fire rate and so on. This is great to start with but when you really start to get into the game’s higher levels you can become so overpowered you negate the whole challenge of the game - which is a shame.
On the subject of shooting aliens, there’s a good mix of enemies to take down, each with their own specific patterns, and you’ll need different tactics to take on each one. For example there’s one type of enemy that surrounds itself by rotating defence drones – you can either shoot them away one by one or time your shots and kill the parent ship, the only issue then is that all the drones deactivate and start to plummet towards your tank in a shower of shrapnel.
Titan Attacks! rewards skilful shots via a combo system that brings out the competition in all high-score seekers. However, your combo counter only increases if you wipe out an enemy wave without getting hit– as soon as you take damage you’re back to square one and sometimes there’s so much crossfire you’ll wonder how you ever got out alive. Puppy Games have introduced other gameplay additions into the Space Invaders mix, for example, occasionally the spaceship you’ve just hit will fall out of the sky and you can hit the wreckage again for extra points. The alien from the doomed ship hastily bails out and if you shoot him as he’s parachuting to safety you’ll get nothing but if you capture him, you’ll get little bonus money.
Titan Attacks! is pure service to Space Invaders fans but feels lacking when put up against other reimagined retro titles such as Space Invaders Infinity. For everyone else though, if you strip away the minor gameplay tweaks and admittedly beautiful HD pixel visuals, you’re left with a game which ultimately appears a little too antiquated once the nostalgia has worn away.