The Best Arcade Game Ever Review

Written by: David Laprad Published: December 28, 2004 When you call your project The Best Arcade Game Ever, you're either indulging in a bit of good-natured hyperbole or you're setting up unreasonable expectations in players. With regard to developer Thomas Plesko's new release, it's safe to say the former is the case, as BAGE isn't The Best Arcade Game Ever, although it might be the cheapest good arcade game for the PC. BAGE is a free-scrolling shooter in which you control a jet aircraft. You guide the plane from a top-down perspective as it wages war against enemy ships and scours the surface of numerous worlds for alien artifacts. The goal on each level is to collect a specific number of artifacts before time and the energy powering your craft run out. You begin with a limited amount of energy and enough ammunition to survive your first encounter with an opponent. As you use your mouse to travel around the map - pressing the right button to accelerate and the left to fire - you encounter more enemies, most of which drop ammunition or energy when you strip them of their mortal coil. Jumping into combat rather than retreating from it becomes a matter of survival as you strive to collect enough pickups to progress. There are four ways to expend energy: getting hit by gunfire, slamming into a building, accelerating your craft and using hyperspace to jump across the map. Your game is over when you run out of energy. The irony of players being forced to fight in order to stay alive is a clever touch. Six guns are available for demolishing the opposition. The default weapon fires a single projectile. Other artillery includes smart bombs, mines, a cannon that fires three projectiles from the nose of the craft, another which shoots a single projectile from the front and rear of the jet, and one more that simultaneously fires in every direction. Each weapon serves a strategic purpose. I lead with the triple-shot, switch to mines to wipe out tailgaters and activate a smart bomb when things get out of hand. You change weapons using the spacebar or by pressing the letter assigned to a particular armament. The in-game interface is perfect. Icons representing each of the weapons line the bottom of the screen; vital statistics (including the number of artifacts needed to complete the mission, the current level, your score, the amount of energy remaining and a clock) grace the top. Centered beneath the stats is a radar that shows the locations of nearby artifacts. All of this information is tightly packed along the edges of display, leaving plenty of room for pyrotechnics. Facilitating the intuitive nature of the interface, each pickup is designed in a unique manner that clearly indicates its use. The main menu is just as user-friendly, although it could be prettier. All of the options BAGE offers are contained on one mouse-controlled screen, including sound volume, graphics resolution, mouse sensitivity, a checkbox for playing CD music and buttons for starting a new campaign, loading a saved game, quitting the program and accessing instructions. Plesko must be aware of how sweet the words "simple" and "effective" are to fans of arcade shooters. The gameplay is enjoyable, too, partly because the controls are tight and responsive. Just piloting the jet across the surface of a planet is a pleasure, although the real fun begins when an enemy moves in. Your opponents have one goal: to shoot you down. Although the computer-controlled enemies are far from brainy (they like bumping into mountains), faster opponents come in greater numbers with each new mission. The difficulty arc is finely tuned, however, with the action beginning at a leisurely pace and slowly increasing in intensity. One welcome addition to the gameplay would be a Survival mode. Just as good as the gameplay are the graphics. BAGE uses the A6 Engine to render attractive 3D environments. Tall buildings, exotic foliage and mountains reach toward you as colored lighting and fog provide ambience. Whether you're navigating a futuristic cityscape or plundering an alien wilderness for artifacts, the visuals are a treat. Other nice touches include exhaust that trails your jet and the blinding blaze of the smart bomb as it obliterates every enemy on the screen. The player and enemy models are small and lack detail, but that's a minor quibble. Slightly more bothersome are the areas in which the foliage hides the ships. This can cause you to crash into enemies you don't see. You can shoot buildings in order to make them translucent and pass your jet aircraft through them - the storyline refers to this as "phasing technology" - so perhaps Plesko will apply the transparency effect to the foliage so your ship stays in view at all times. Don't let the $4.95 price tag scare you off: BAGE outshines more expensive offerings both graphically and in terms of gameplay. If you're a shooter fan, lock and load The Best Arcade Game Ever.