A Look At RESHOOT

I have written more than once(1)(2) about RESHOOT on this blog, and i can safely say that my expectations have been quite high for the last 8 months or so now.

But why? – what did one base these expectations on?

Normally game devs/publishers send out stuff regularly to the public or they give exclusive deals to specific sites or publications. None of the above ever happened.

Very little information and media coverage have been one of the RESHOOT problems, not much information has been given to either websites nor magazines. All we (gamers and news sites) had to go on was some very good looking screenshots and a video or two. Why this silence?.

RESHOOT IS FINALLY RELEASED, so it is time for answers.

First of all, let’s have a look at the packaging and its production values.

The first thing that hit me when i opened the jiffy bag was, woaah! – now that is what we call a good looking box!. The front of the cover is lovely crafted, explosive colours and it looks very professionally at the same time.

The back and spine are a wee bit worse though, the spine is for some strange reason inverted (name from the bottom and up) so it does look a bit “off” at first glance.  The back is nicely designed but as with the spine, it misses some of the standard designs all or most other games today have.  – The box design is great, but it would have been perfect if they had followed the norm.

That superb front cover design is also on the CD, looks brilliant and to make things even better is that it is a proper “pressed” CD and not just a label. Certainly the best looking Amiga CD i have seen in years now.

The manual is yet another high-quality product, top colour quality, professionally printed too.

The manual is pretty cool actually as it is more than just a manual, it is actually a magazine – Amiga Joker mini mag with articles and such. A good read too and well worth my (and yours) time for sure.

The reason for the inclusion of the magazine/the style is that the author of the game used to be a main(?) editor in the German Amiga magazine –  Amiga Joker.

All in all a very cool tribute.

The game also came with this “promotion card”, postcard-sized, very good looking card produced on very good paper.  I guess these are the cards they will have at game shows and such.

Seeing this card makes me want to buy the game again heh. – fantastic stuff.

Ok, time to talk about the actual game then…

Due to various reasons, all screenshots have been done in WinUAE and in an upscaled state in order to provide a proper article look (thanks Roar).

RESHOOT starts off pretty simple, very short loading time for a CD32 game and the only “filler” looks to be the loading picture (see towards the end of article).

The menu is pretty straightforward, nothing special here, a simple beat and a static front page with a flashing text box which inform you about various things like best score, last score and so on.

Very simplistic yet very intuitive.

RESHOOT have been a bit of a wild guess type of game really, what was i to expect? just about every picture or video out there of the game looks exactly the same.  Why? Well, i finally have the answer to why.

The game kicks off with a standard fare type of shooting down wave after wave of enemies, sometimes small ones and sometimes larger ones, there are patterns to it although they change from time to time (each reboot of the game i guess).

The task is very simple: You have 1 life, no weapon upgrades or such so just make the most of it it.

After a few waves of button hammering you get to something called ESCALATION, i have not really understood the point of this, at first i thought it would be a boss or such warning but all in all it seems like it is some sort of a bump in difficulty/toughness.

The first problem with the game has most likely become very obvious to you by the time you have reached your first ESCALATION logo, the problem is the finger you use for pressing the fire button.

Tendonitis is the first thing i thought of when i had played for a few minutes, i must have pressed the fire button over 1000 times and i still feel that it was 1000 too few. The weapon in the game requires you to continuously hammer-press the fire button, there’s no burst weapon mode or autofire in it and to make it even worse, the weapon is very weak at the same time.

I had to take a long break (days) from the game after my first game session, my arms/hands felt like trainwrecks after all the button pressing.
.. BUT, the more you play RESHOOT the more you want to play it again, it is addictive as hell and a very rewarding one too, so yes even though i was in pain i still wanted to play it more.

Every god damned time you die you just have to restart and try to get a bit further into the game.

The game is fun to play, i keep getting excited everytime i progress a bit further (before i die naturally) and nothing beats getting to see another new enemy type.

After the 30th time or so i realized that there is no way to beat this game, the game will win by default here due to the way it is made in regards to weapons and that fire button.

This is one of the enemies i like the most (so far), very cool to watch them fly although they do require way too many bullets to be killed.

I normally die around this place.

And now you too know why all screenshots out there looks the same, the game is simply too hard and the game design is basically the same from the first screen you get to.

There are more enemies than shown in the screenshots in the article, but how many more i am not sure of for now (i have seen at least 2 more).

This is the loading/intro picture, looks superb!. This is the only filler i can find in the game so far, i mean – it doesn’t have to be in the game, adds nothing except for us seeing how the game would look on today’s hardware setups (i guess).

The second problem with the game is how the bullets from the enemies works, some bullets all of a sudden speeds up which is really annoying, other bullets decides to just vanish and last but not least some bullets are “heat seeking”.

Heatseeking ain’t that bad i hear you say?, well i agree but in the case of RESHOOT, these bullets can go outside of the screen and still come back from another side and so on.

Many speak of RESHOOT as a technical marvel, well it is smooth and it is way above the quality you would expect today from small Amiga productions, it certainly works better than many other things out there but the project is hampered by gameplay issues and small odd graphical choices that i can’t understand at all.

The music is simple but the build-up concept of it adds quite a bit to the gameplay when the music, gfx and gameplay works at its best together is when the game shines the most.

RESHOOT is a game you have to try before you will understand its concept and the “just one more go”  gameplay.

Screenshots and Youtube videos do the game no justice really, the game has its flaws but those are won over by small gameplay decisions and the whole professional feel to the product.

Do you like to support the Amiga? , do you like sidescroller shoot em ups? , bullet hell? , retro gameplay? Chip music? huge enemies? and what about the A1200 or the CD32?.  Well, if one of the above is true then hop on and buy the game, you won’t regret it.

As a final note, a sequel called “RESHOOT R” is being considered /worked on as we speak.