What is the biggest surprise about a game developed to near finish in 2004 and cast into obscurity following the bankruptcy of Acclaim Entertainment? It finally sees the light of day in 2007 and that it is still a fresh title and after almost three years on the shelf, it still exudes old-school awesomeness.
While the originally planned release for the Xbox got the chop, The Red Star finally drops in on the Playstation 2, courtesy of XS Games, serving up its twitch combination of beat ‘em up and bullet hell mechanics onto one platter. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, players are thrust into a warring alternate-history Russia, where explosions and shrapnel are a dime a dozen occurrence.
The Red Star offers a total of three characters (one unlockable), each with different abilities and attacks to encourage replayability and strategy, and, of course, you can grab a buddy to cover your back in the game’s two-player co-op mode. The game’s shining charm is in its eclectic mix of brawling and shooting, mapping a series of melee attacks and combos to the square button and the player’s gun to the circle button. In tandem with holds of the button, lock-ons and different directions of the analog stick, The Red Star provides a deceptively large selection of pain-inducing moves for players to execute.
While each level becomes painfully predictable in nature – fight wave of minions, face large, bullet-spraying mechanical abomination, heal, repeat – the game is perfectly balanced and spaced out to the point where The Red Star avoids the obvious pitfall of tedium that plagues most beat ‘em ups and shooters. Enemies come in a mix of types that can be killed in any fashion, force players to break down shields with melee attacks, require players to daze them so they can be blasted with gunfire and more. In later stages, the game won’t hesitate to throw multiple types of these enemies onto the screen at once and it hardly leads to a dull moment.
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