xbox live indie game reviews

2176 Supernova Storm is a top-down, arena space shooter. Think Asteroids, but with a bigger level, more obstacles, powerups, and other people shooting at you. I'm a big fan of this type of game, but I wasn't a big fan of this particular incarnation. The camera just flat-out sucks. Instead of centering the camera on your ship (as one might expect), your ship "pushes" the camera around. Imagine a centered box which takes up roughly half of the screen dimensions. Instead of panning right when you move to the right, the camera waits until you hit the edge of this "camera box" and only then tracks your movement. The problem with this type of system is that you only see about 1/4 of the screen in the direction you're moving (i.e. the direction you actually need to see) and 3/4 of the screen is allocated to seeing behind your ship. That makes combat tough, and combat is really all this game is about.

Take that crappy camera and layer in some bright backgrounds and tiny foreground elements and what was already difficult becomes impossible. Most of the space background is dark, so this isn't the problem. On one part of the screen, though, is a giant moon. If there's any other ships (or even your own ship) in front of the bright white moon, good luck seeing anything. Besides the camera and the backgrounds, the shooting mechanic itself kind of sucks. Aiming is next-to-impossible unless you're right on top of an enemy ship.

There are a wide variety of powerups, but the limiting factor was clearly my ability to aim--and it was such a limiting factor that I couldn't tell any difference between "powered up" weapons and the ones you spawn with. Combat in this game was so uninspired, in fact, that I had a better time flying around gathering pickups than actually engaging any of the enemies.  A well-executed, mutliplayer space shooter would be worth double the 200 points this game is going for... but 2176 Supernova Storm isn't even close to that game. Skip this one.