A Look At RESHOOT-R:Let The Shooting Begin

RESHOOT-R has been in the wind lately and that for a reason, it is simply one of the largest releases for the Amiga this year and yes today is the official launch day (28th of May 2019) and this is our review.

RESHOOT-R is the sequel to the 2016 hit shoot ’em up game RESHOOT and they (Spieleschreiber together with Martin Ahman and Kevin Saunders) have worked hard to turn the series from an endless shooter to a proper shoot ’em up with level progression, boss fights and even a story.

The first impression I got from playing RESHOOT-R was that this is a AAA title and that loads of people had worked hard and long on this one, everything from the graphics, music and the code screamed professionals and could have easily been mistaken for a high-quality title from Team17 or the likes back in the 90s.

RESHOOT-R aims high, maybe too high for some people as the game have now ended up as a totally different game altogether, funnily enough, the game is now more in line with how I expected the first game to be before I tried it.

RESHOOT-R only require AGA and 2MB Chipram which means that it will work on everything from the CD32 to the most souped-up A4000 with 68060 CPU out there, you won’t notice any difference on upgraded hardware either as this game is meant to run fluid on the most basic AGA machines out there.

When you start the game you will be met with a little opening and a nice picture before reaching the main menu which is rather simplistic yet effective, the only options you can do in the menu is to switch on or off the music and sound-fx (default setting is music+soundFx) and yes you will also see the high score list (which is saved in NVRAM on the CD32 or on your HDD if played from there on other hardware) and the credits screen.

One of the biggest changes from RESHOOT to RESHOOT-R is that there now is a story (and progression) to the game, every now and then pictures pop up showing dialogues while you play that will tell you what is going on and so on, a nice touch although not so sure if it is needed but many will most likely appreciate the little break between the enemy waves.

One of the worst things with the first game was that there was no autofire and that became very tiring for most players as it more or less required you to hammer the fire button nonstop from start to stop, this has been fixed in the sequel, you not only got autofire now but you also got weapon upgrades that get very powerful after you get a few of them.

There are weapon upgrades in the game and while there ain’t too many of them you will pretty quickly max them out and yes you do get a bit too overpowered and if you are an experienced  shoot ’em up player then you will most likely manage to stay alive all the way to the end of the level without any problems because that is how overpowered you actually do get.

While the game is basically a “One life” only game you still get more chances if you have upgraded your ship and weapon but when you die you downgrade your weapons too.

Another thing is that your weapons and speed upgrade get reset when you beat a boss and go to the next level, this means that it will take a while for you to get to the max level again and some levels are harder than others in terms of getting upgrades.

Here you can see the upgraded ship, it might not look all that brutal but it is very effective and yes it looks a lot better in motion, especially so on a CRT monitor naturally.

The screenshots used in this article is from the final version but upscaled and through emulation only, this is sadly the only way I can do it due to my grabber hardware and software combo have proven rather useless lately…

You will hit bullet hells like this at times, but most enemy waves and bullet patterns are easy to predict before it is too late, no matter how many bullets there are on screen you will always stand a chance to evade them and that is a very good thing too because not everyone likes Bullet Hell games with Elite difficulty in them.

I have promised Spieleschreiber that I wouldn’t spoil too much of the later levels in the game for obvious reasons but I can at least say that the game just gets better and better the further you get,  the first level may look a bit dull for some who played RESHOOT a lot in the past but let’s just say that the level here is different and there are new effects and lots of visual magic going on that no screenshot could ever justify.

The game ramps up on everything for level 2, huge explosions, loads of explosions, lots of bullets, crazy colours and effects as well as an insane amount of rocks that they have decided to throw at you just for fun.

The parallax scrolling and visuals look very unorthodox in this level but it works in ways that both stress you and relax you at the same time.

The scoring system gives extra points for killing a whole wave of enemies and even better is that you can also chain together kills to get combos and huge scores and that is good for two things, the local high score table that is stored on your Amiga but also the Online high score table if you chose to go online and type in your random generated score code that is given on the game over screen.

The direct address to the high score table is here (add scores with the + button in the bottom right-hand corner).

Nothing beats a proper high score battle with friends out there, right?

Things are heating up in the later levels and yes Spieleschreiber has thought about how to handle that, if you die on Level 3 or later you will get the option to use a “continue” to try again from that level, I personally do not think this was a good idea as it made the game too easy and will somewhat get the player through the game too quickly.

That said, spending a continue ain’t always a good thing if you are a score whore of course, so if you plan on killing the high score lists then you will have to 1 life this game for sure.

As with the last screenshot this is also from one of the later levels in the game (level 4), won’t say too much about it so I don’t spoil it for you guys out there, but yes every level got a good boss fight but this one probably got the one I like the most, there are also some really cool effects going on in this level that have made me like this one the most of all of them.

There are more levels after this one and there are some really good surprises too but the best thing about all of it is that the game is brilliant fun from the very first second to the very end.

The sound fx and music in the game is another huge plus, just my kind of music for a shoot ’em up really, a techno-thumping beat that ramps up when you meet a boss and try to set you in the mood when everything slows down a bit, it works really good and while there ain’t all that many tracks and variety it still manages to glue everything together with its style and flow.

I guess you are wondering where to buy this game right now? , well there are currently 3 versions available right now from APC-TCP (AmigaShop.de) and two more to come at a later point.