Review - Saucer Strike

Saucer Strike is a flash animation action/shooter game created by Newgrounds.com user Sean McGee (Weasel). This UFO game was submitted to Newgrounds.com on November 6, 2009 and won a Daily 3rd Place award on November 7, 2009.

Gameplay

You control a UFO and have to destroy the cities of Earth. There are a number of levels that are available. In each level, the objective is the same: destroy all the buildings and/or enemies to advance to the next level.

At the top left of the screen are two bars: a green bar, which indicates your energy, and a red bar, which indicates your health. The green bar will deplete as you fire your weapon but will recover automatically. Making kills increases the maximum energy the green bar can hold.

On the right side of the screen at the top is your current score and a point multiplier. As you destroy things with your UFO, the point multiplier will color green. When the current number is filled, it will go to the next number. For instance, when you begin a level, the multiplier is a grayed out 1x. When you fill the 1x with green by making kills or destroying buildings, the 1x will turn into 2x, which you can also fill to get to 3x. These expressions indicate how much your points will be multiplied when you make a kill or destroy a building. The multiplier can reduce back to 1x if you don't make successive kills quickly enough.

You can change weapons using the spacebar. If you need to heal, change to the red cross symbol. You gain multiple weapons throughout the game. However, these weapons do not carry over to the next level.

Controls

Use the mouse to control the UFO's movements.
Click to fire. Hold down click for continuous fire, but watch your energy bar.
Press and hold the spacebar to open up the menu for weapon selection. The available options will appear around the UFO. Click on an option to select it.

Review

Saucer Strike is not a very exciting game. Each level is pretty much the same thing. Fly from left to right and destroy buildings. The weapon upgrades are exciting, but you can only use them for so long, since by the time you get them, there aren't many targets left to use your new weapons on. Also, weapons don't carry over to the next level, which means you basically start from scratch with every new level. Overall, there aren't many opponents in the game, until towards the end. Having enemies throughout the game would make this game more interesting and challenging. Also, the controls were a little awkward, since it was easy to miss targets by flying over them too quickly. Keyboard controls may have been a better choice for this type of scrolling game.

Saucer Strike scores a 5/10. It does provide entertainment, but it doesn't offer much more than that. Having more diverse levels, a better upgrade system, and better control movements would make this game much better.