I feel like a World of Warcraft player at the moment, unable to use the toilet, touch grass, or interact with hoomans as I’m so locked in with these reviews. That’s what a holiday does to you, and I’ve just realised there’s even more I need to post. Is this thing on? Anyone out there? If so, our next one is Rogue Eclipse.
Yet another shmup, and again, very different to both Omen and IKARUS. This time around we have a third-person shooter in the guise of Starwing/Starfox – depending on which side of the pond you reside. After playing a ton of games of late, I was more up for something easier going (like Tidy Mart), and out of the three shmups, this was the most accessible, though not necessarily the easiest.
Once again, we’ll skim over the story as I wasn’t particularly engaged with it. Essentially, you’ll be going through a series of stages to take out some elite classes of ships while keeping back the lesser starships with a shitty stick. They are naturally easier to deal with, but when you have something blasting the crap out of you and gnats flying around you with lasers, it’s best to adopt a strategy: take out the little ones then concentrate on the harder hitters, or vice versa.
Like Starwing/Starfox (hello, Americans!), navigation is pretty good. You’ll be perpetually locked at a fixed camera angle, which isn’t always the best when you have enemies surrounding you and missiles you can’t see, so barrel rolling and adopting a start/stop approach with boosts and airbrakes are what will keep you alive, while the latter is best for dogfights and picking off the feral ones.
At your disposal is a simple cannon and a variation of weapons from missiles to beams that are easily unlockable and all offer a different approach. However, the benefits are very black and white without any middle ground – at least that’s how I found Rogue Eclipse. Either you use the weak missiles for crowd control and heat-seeking benefits, or shred enemies with the beam. The other options I felt were pointless, as were the supposed unlocks that Rogue Eclipse has to offer.
After each attempt, you will get a notification that you have unlocks and shortcuts available, though the former isn’t accurate. As a rogue-lite, after each attempt you can either replay straightaway or head back to your base to look at what you (haven’t) won. This is mostly mods for the ship that increase the shield capacity or speed. I found that shields were the key thing, as health is not replenished, so on the arse of your pants with shield generation throughout. It’s doable, though you need to keep shooting down the smaller ships for a boost.
The worst part about Rogue Eclipse is the collision aspect. While you aren’t clipping enemies every five minutes, you can have an excellent run with full health, then all of a sudden clip a larger ship and instantly die. Unlike a good rogue-like, you don’t have permanent stat increases, as each run you have to restart again without any real sign of progression. Repetition can kick in, as expected, but these shortcuts allow you to fast-track to the last area you unlocked. The downside is that you miss out on the chance of building up your upgrades in between.
Instead of upgrading your loadout at your base, random upgrades happen between each stage, so it’s worth repeating them rather than using a shortcut. On the other hand, should you die, i.e. a random collision, you lose it all and start again. The only thing you keep is your ship options and loadout, though you have to return to the start each time; as if you click replay, you can’t reselect your missile setup. I found this somewhat frustrating, but not as much as the collision aspect.
Rogue Eclipse is a nice-looking arcade shooter, though it misses out on the rogue-like/lite loop of marginal gains. Yes, the shortcuts can speed up progression, but often you are underpowered to defeat the enemies and, with that collision side of things, run the risk of restarting without any new unlocks, despite the menu telling you that you have them. A story wouldn’t save this as it’s not necessary, but I would have liked to have seen visible gains in progression. As it stands, it lacks a hook to want to keep playing and is best for short bursts.
