Genre: Arcade/ActionDeveloper: Bitmap Brothers, TheYear: 1988
Rating: 0.00 / 10.00
(based on 0 votes)
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The first word that comes to mind when I think of Xenon is: "odd". And please, remember I'm talking about the PC title.
Xenon was very innovative for its time, certainly a step forward in terms of pace and addictiveness. Also had good graphics, very cool power-ups and some surprises in sound effects (that digitized voice through PC-speaker gave me the creeps). There's no story, just shoot everything that moves. Not bad for Bitmap Bros.' debut title.
The odd thing about Xenon is the gameplay. Most top-down shoot'em-ups (including the best of all, Tyrian) have a somewhat simplistic style of gameplay, where your ship is always pointing upwards, moves quickly to dodge enemy fire and hits everything relatively in the way, be it an aircraft or a land-mine. But not in Xenon: here the ship moves, points and shoots in all directions, and can turn into a land-roving tank to hit land enemies, giving shoot'em-ups a new level of realism. The ship moves slightly slower than the screen however, so with all that realism and the irrationally awkward controls (on the keyboard) it's nearly impossible to avoid getting killed over and over, even after some time getting used to the "innovations". More realistic, yes, but think about it. When the screen moves always downwards and all enemies come from upwards, why pointing all directions? It actually makes it a lot harder hit anything, and the fact that the ship is a bit too slow certainly doesn't help. So I think, only for the innovation part, Bitmap Bros. went a step too far, or simply Xenon was badly ported to PC, as the Atari ST version gets rave reviews from everyone.
Still, don't get me wrong, this *is* a decent shooter, though nothing compared to its sequel, Xenon 2: Megablast. Just manage to play it with a joystick, or prepare to some teeth-gnashing.
