Developer: Storybird

Publisher: Sotrybird

Platform: PC, Switch (reviewed)

Release Date: Feb 21, 2019

Price: $8.99

Back in 2014, Gigantic Army; Astro Port’s side scrolling 16-bit shooter found its way to Steam and now it available on the Nintendo Switch. So lets dive right in and cause some explosions. Unsurprisingly the premise is not that complicated. You of course, pilot a robot suit, against alien forces from planet Ramulon invading your planet, and of course you must use your mech suit to defend the place. The good news is that the game delivers what you expect, mechs, fighting and best of all stomping about. The bad news is that it hasn’t got much more. It’s a fine shoot ‘em up platformer and that’s about it.

The controls are predictable, but I experienced a bit of a learning curve with the aiming system, although my ten-year-old assistant got it on the second try. The confusion arises because you need both sticks to aim your weapons and shield properly and one of these also handles movement. The result is that you need a bit of practice to synchronize the movement and the targeting. It's annoying at first, but I got past it fairly quickly. The rest of the controls are fine and sometimes even deserve a pat on the mech for original thinking. For instance, once you get the hang of things you can pick between one of three weapons and special attacks, and can slam enemies with a powerful melee attack. You can also slide or fly a jetpack, to dodge attacks all in fairly short order. You will need this flexibility as there are a ton of enemies to deal with. Big and small mechs, turrets and ships. Battling them is a fair challenge, as ore the boss-battles, although I beat a couple of bosses a lot faster than I thought I might.

The game runs fine on the Switch, its art and 16bit graphics are perfect for this sort of game although there is nothing new here. Likewise, the soundtrack is just what you expect, although there seemed to be some distortion with some explosions. Bottom line it’s a solid if uninspired side-scrolling platformer with weapons, explosions and gigantic mechs stomping about. My biggest issue is that it's too short, I beat it in about 90 minutes and my assistant in less than that.. So be warned it might leave you wanting more I know I wanted a few more levels.

The Good:

Competent Design
Good Control scheme
Good price

The Bad:

Short
uninspired

Gigantic Army Review