XType Plus review

Simple, yet effective

Review written by
Garrett Thomas

August 2nd, 2014

XType was a simple arcade shoot'em up freeware game released a while back, and now it's making its appearance on the Wii U in the form of XType Plus. Is this title any different from the original? Is it worth the three dollar price of admission?

In XType Plus, you simply shoot at a several different boss ships and destroy them to make your overall score go up. You have to avoid the likes of lasers and projectiles as you're firing at the boss ship, or else you'll lose a life. You have three lives, and taking just one hit will result in the loss of one life.

There are two modes in XType Plus - namely Classic Mode and Plus Mode. Classic mode is pretty much the same thing as the original XType on PC. Three lives, fire at enemy ships and break off their parts one by one, see how high you score, the whole nine yards. In the new Plus Mode, the game steers more toward a time attack kind of style. You're in a race against the clock as you shoot at the boss ships, and instead of losing a life when you get hit, you lose time. On the other hand, beating a boss nets you more time. You continue to fight against the enemy ships until time runs out. Your ship also moves a bit faster in Plus Mode, bosses are a bit tougher, and you come equipped with three bombs you can use to destroy all enemy fire on the screen. The only issue I found with the general gameplay is that your hit box seems a bit too small, as countless times I saw enemy fire touch me yet leave me completely unharmed.

The controls are actually pretty beautiful in their simplicity. You use the L stick to move, and the R stick to fire. To use bombs in Plus Mode, simply tap the right shoulder button. And that's all there is to it. The controls work, they're incredibly easy to grasp, and you can't fairly pin any deaths on them. This is definitely how controls should be for these types of games.

There's not much to speak of on the presentation front. There are only a handful of tracks, although they are pretty decent, and they give off a sort of Metroid-gone-techno vibe. The graphics are as bare-bones as you would expect from a game like this, but movement is fluid and everything is clearly visible. At the end of the day, XType Plus certainly doesn't look ugly, and I can see at least a few players really digging the soundtrack.

An online leaderboard comes with the overall package as well. Not only that, but you can also watch the replays of other players from across the globe and see how they managed to get the scores they did. Unfortunately though, a bug was reported to be found in the online features of the game, and thus XType Plus was removed from the eShop so that the developers could resolve the issue.

If you're a fan of shoot'em ups, then you'll probably come to enjoy XType Plus. How much the replay value the game has depends on how much getting a high score means to you, so if you're not interested in that, then expect the game to very quickly get old. But what the game does, it does well.