GAIABREAKER review

GAIABREAKER succeeds at breaking my heart

Review written by
James Wynne

August 21st, 2014

Shoot 'em up (or shmup) is a classic, go-to gaming genre that's simple in concept, can be as challenging as you want, and can remain fun for long periods of time. All traits found somewhat lacking in GAIABREAKER from Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc..

The graphics are acceptable. The sprites look fine, but have very limited animation. The backgrounds are bland and repetitive. Functional is the word for the graphics. Well mostly, as there are times when exploding enemies conceal enemy fire, leading to an unexpected death or two.

The sound is limited as well. Get used to the sound of lock-on, max lock-on, missile, and enemy explosion because, until boss fights, those are the only sound effects you're going to hear. When you do make it to a boss, you get to hear enemy laser and boss explosion sound effects too. Your standard fire doesn't even produce sound. The last thing I can say about the audio experience is that the electronic music is fitting for a generic shoot 'em up.

I guess you could say "repetitive" is a recurring theme in this game, as everything repeats itself over and over again. I know that's to be expected somewhat in a shmup, but this game goes way overboard with it, and I can tell you exactly why: The player is limited to one plane of movement.

The entire game is balanced around the fact that you can only move on one plane, and have no power-ups. Your ship's hit box is deceptively small allowing a lot of projectiles to pass through your sprite harmlessly. Enemies are downright chivalrous. They refuse to attack past the halfway point of the screen, and there's always a break in the fire so you at least have a chance to escape unharmed. They also come in simple formations that repeat often because there's only so much you can do as a player on a single plane of motion.

The developers at Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. are not stupid. They know how to design a fair game, and that's what makes this tragic. UEI built a decent game around a poor design choice. Gradius III, my personal favorite shmup, came out over 25 years ago, but managed to have two dimensional movement plus a great system of power-ups. There's no excuse for GAIABREAKER to have such dated elements as its core gameplay.

All of this could be overlooked if GAIABREAKER were priced reasonably, it is a decently designed shmup after all. If this game were a dollar or two it could be a fun time waster. Unfortunately, the price tag of $14.99 is highway robbery for something outclassed by offerings already available on the Wii U eShop and Virtual Console at far more reasonable prices.