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By Contributing Writer Mike Bean Rating: Average There were plenty of great shooters on the market when I was a kid, including Defender, Gradius, R-Type, Zaxxon, Lifeforce, and more. It's been a while since a really high-profile shooter was released, and unfortunately Omega Boost fails to live up to the standard set by its predecessors. The graphics are fairly impressive. They serve up some nice views of all the destruction you cause, as well as some massive bosses who will quite often will smack you around a few times before you have any idea what strategy to take. Remarkably, the game's developers at Polyphony Digital (who also created Gran Turismo) have included a replay feature that lets you watch the havoc you just wreaked on the previous level in spectacular, cinematic fashion. I'm not sure how they did it, but Polyphony managed to make the replays almost as fun as the game itself. I was disappointed to find that there are only two weapons in Omega Boost- the homing laser that you begin with and a vulcan gun. That's it. There are no additional weapons to find, no power-ups, nothing. In addition, Omega Boost can be very disorienting at times. There is an extremely useful "scan" feature that automatically turns you to face the nearest incoming enemy, but considering the pace of the game and the number of bad guys coming at you, the "nearest incoming enemy" changes frequently. It would have been nice if you could lock on to a target and stay locked on to it until you kill it. Also, quite a few of Omega Boost's levels take place in large, open environments, but the levels that are in tighter quarters can be a real pain at times. This is mainly because when the camera fails to keep up with the action in these levels, the game doesn't give you many options other than to grit your teeth and prepare for the pounding you will inevitably receive. There's not much else to say here. It's always fun to take a walk down memory lane if you played a lot of shooters growing up, but sometimes it's better to do this with old games like Gradius rather than new games like Omega Boost. Omega Boost offers what you might have come to expect from shooters these days- a lousy story line, decent action, and not a whole lot of depth. Send your thoughts on this review to mike@mastergamer.com
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