Act: Storm Angel [by Loaded Studios]

Game Review: Storm Angel
Release: November 26, 2003
Genre: Action
Developer: LOADED Studios
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 8 Mb 3D accelerator video card with OpenGL 1.2 Support, PII-300, 32 Mb RAM
Players: 1
Price: $14.95


Upon looking at the demo of Storm Angel I was immediately excited.  The demo gave me just enough vision of the game to think it might be something of a spiritual successor to R-Type.  There were many reasons to believe so.  Instead of the game being focused on you playing each level perfectly, Storm Angel ensures that your ship has the same level of powerful weapons after you die as you did before you died.  This leads the game being consistently difficult instead of being sporadically so. 

What in my mind lead to R-Type being the most commonly appreciated game of the side-scrolling shooter class was that it was difficult whether or not your ship was fully powered up.  The power-ups themselves were of course spectacular, but were you to loose all of your power-ups the game became more difficult but far from impossible.  Storm Angel's take on this in providing you with all of your weapons at full power whenever you die could be considered a cop-out to some as it takes some of the difficulty out of the level design.  However, all you need to do is ponder for a couple of minutes the number of times that you have become frustrated after dieing in a space-shooter game only to see the entire game fall apart will be happy to know that just because you made one error that the error wasn't fatal.

Weapons in Storm Angel are bought at the end of each level.  In addition to the points that you gather by blasting away at the enemies on the screen, you also get money.  Large enemies may drop icons that when collected further your bank balance.  With cash in hand you can then use the shop at the end of the level to either purchase different primary and secondary weapons or you can power-up your existing weapons.  Storm Angel doesn't offer you the ability to have multiple primary or secondary weapons so you may find that it is initially more difficult to play the game after switching to a new weapon if you don't have the money to power it up a few levels.  The weapons are quite varied, and it is pleasing to note that you are not required to have a specific weapon to beat any one level (except maybe the end boss who you won't beat without hornet missiles).  If you prefer a stronger weapon that doesn't have a spread effect to it, you can use one, or if you prefer a weaker weapon that has a pronounced spread ability, then you can choose that one.  The ability to really mix and match the weapons to your liking is an enjoyable feature to the game.

The thing that stuck out most in my mind about Storm Angel was the feeling of power that one feels while playing the game.  This is really the main reason I brought up R-Type at the beginning of the article.  That game had a way of making the player feel as if they were nearly invincible due to the number of close scrapes that you got out of.  Storm Angel was much the same way.  I often found myself helplessly surrounded by laser fire and was able to escape by careful maneuvering.  While playing the game you feel a very solid attachment to what is presented and you are in total control of every hair-raising save of your ship that you make.

Overall, Storm Angel packs in a very solid punch with great graphics and even stronger game play that I believe will keep most shooter fans happy they laid down the money to buy it.


Graphics 8/10
The graphics run between awesome and ok.  It's interesting to note that the backgrounds are 3D in nature, which really spotlights the quality of the graphics, however at the same time as being 3D, the final level, which typically fills 2/3 of the screen, is just a single scrolling image and not one of near the quality of the 3D modeled background that scrolls in front of it.  That disparity between the quality of the background layers is something that is shown throughout the graphics in the game.  Your ship is well-modeled and textured.  However many of the enemy ships only look good until you stare at them a moment.  The enemy ships have a most peculiar texturing to them that may have been intended to make them look very alien, but instead makes them often appear to be attacking blobs.  The weapons throughout the game are well-done with the final secondary weapon that you can purchase, hornets, being really cool to watch graphically.

Sound 8/10
The sound track is very up-beat and all the sounds in game are done in solid quality.  They aren't all that catchy, but they do their job well enough.

Game Play 10/10
I rarely find games that I don't have to adjust to playing.  The last shooter I played, Astrobatics, was one that definitely took a good bit of getting used to.  This is certainly not the case with Storm Angel where the connection you feel between your controller and your spaceship is strong to say the least.  Those who give even the demo a try on this should feel instantly at home using a joystick to control their fighter pilot.  Soon thereafter you'll be making some awesome moves as you save the planet from alien invaders.

Concept 7/10
You're not really seeing anything too new in Storm Angel.  The backgrounds are interesting and different, but for the most part the game is a very straight-forward side-scrolling shooter.

Value 8/10
After playing the demo I was quite sure that Storm Angel was a hidden gem among indie games.  I still want to believe that, but the reality is that it doesn't offer a whole lot more beyond the demo other than the cool weapon power-ups.  Sure there are larger bosses and some cool graphic backgrounds, but for the most part the game doesn't offer any different challenges than what you see in the demo.  There aren't really any obstacles to move around other than the asteroids that you run into on one level.  Typically shooters make some sort of progression from wide-open game fields to levels that have objects in them that you need to avoid in addition to the ones that you need to shot.  In Storm Angel the idea is to just blast away at everything.  That isn't a bad thing to be sure, but may leave some gamers feeling unsatisfied.

Fun 8/10
I really enjoyed playing Storm Angel.  Being able to so easily control the space fighter was a big part of it.  The other part was advancing through each level to see different graphics in the background as well as building my way up the technology ladder with ever cooler weapons.  There is certainly a good number of levels to play through, and I enjoyed working my way through them.

Overall 8/10
At the least I think that everyone should play the demo of Storm Angel.  I think every shooter fan will like what they see from the demo.  The full version however may feel a little lacking in its progression from the demo, but that should be no reason to deter you from getting that if you liked the demo.  After all the $14.95 price tag should be low enough that most anyone can give this one a try and work their way up to those super-cool hornet missiles.

Added: May 10th 2004
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
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