Reviews - Shatari

This game still appears to be getting updates, so this review will hopefully become outdated soon. The game currently has some promise: the art style is cute and does the job, and if you like arcade style shoot-em ups then it delivers a decent experience at first. There are four major flaws though, that I truly hope will be patched out:
First, the music is repetitive. I like the song, but it loops endlessly and grates after about the third time around.
Second, you don't shoot where you're aiming. In fact, the aiming is amazingly limited and completely unintuitive. Don't give the player a crosshair if the bullets will only fire on a weird fixed arc in a few cardinal directions; it's just annoying. In fact, the greatest source of difficulty is fighting the controls so that you can shoot the zombies that are slowly moving towards you.
Third, switching weapons is buggy and there doesn't seem to be any way to go back to the pistol. If you press the switch weapon button then you're playing slots on which weapon it will end on, which is unhelpful if you need something specific.
Finally, the collision detection is terrible. Getting caught on geometry is a major hindrance and the only reason you'll even get his in the early stages. Trees and rubble have an invisible wall around them that will trip you up at a great distance, and maneuvering around them is always a chore. It's especially glaring because the controls are otherwise responsive; you get used to your character going where you expect them too, and then suddenly they stop in midair with nothing around them and a zombie horde getting in some free hits.

At the end of the day I have to settle on a 4/10 for now, with the hopes that these will be addressed soon in a patch. I'll probably come back to the game again in a few months to see if they've fixed anything, but for now it's still too early to really enjoy it around the flaws.

If this were a beta product I would recommend it, as it has the skeleton of a great game. Sadly, it's far from done and I don't think it's going to get any additional content added. The ability to create custom scenarios and design your own ships, the addition of more standard ships, or even the ability to play larger battles would all add a ton of millage, but as it is it's really not worth buying.

This has the potential to be a really fun game. Then, right as the plot is starting to pick up, the game ends. I've started to notice a trend with Indie games that don't do anything with their premise, and this is a poster child for it.

Very buggy and laggy. I'll revise this if they ever patch it, but currently the English version is not worth purchasing. The game needs some serious optimizing and they forgot to include audio options for English (which is a problem, since the subtitles often clip off the screen). German speakers could probably add 3 to the score.