WAGS : Project Root on Steam

(Weekly Affordable Games on Steam)
A game of lasers, reflexes, and a story that you won't care about

I discovered Steam through their incessant sale pitches, indie games, and a wide plethora of cheap games from new and small developers to the big boys of the gaming business.

For this ultimate gaming exercise I will (try to) be buying and reviewing games on steam that are under 5 USD (about the price you'd pay for a pirated game DVD) so that you can figure out if you should buy it or spend it on a Grande frappucino at your local Starbucks.

And off we go!
We kick off with Project Root (was* on sale for USD 2.49, normal price USD 9.99 – which is still not a lot) a top-down, side to side scroller arcade shoot-em-up similar to Raiden and Skyforce, married to a freedom of mobility to explore and shoot up the available maps in each quest.

Graphics and Sound

Project Root is pretty. Graphics are neat, menus are spiffy and created clearly with consoles in mind. PC Gamers don't lose out much in the looks department, although the game will graphically show that you should press the ABXY buttons. Pressing these on your keyboard does nothing but make you question your life's choices.

Start the mission and the ugliest part of the game appears, the cutscenes that deliver the dialogue. At best it is the fuel and catalyst that inspires each of us to hit skip as many times as necessary to never have to read it again.

How do you fit those boobs in that outfit? Science.

Once you're in, though, the game rapidly fixes your perception of it's graphics. It's not gorgeously rendered, but it looks good and is smooth on my budget rig. Lasers, bullets, and missiles are colourful and pleasant to look at (until you remember that you're supposed to dodge them). The music doesn't change much and soon just gets lost in the heat of your dog fighting.

If you ever have quiet moments in the game, the repeating music will simply make you want to hunt down more enemies to kill, anything to take your mind off it - which may have been the point.

Have I mentioned the explosions? They're glorious. Even Arnie movies should take inspiration from these Bayesian wonders.

I don't even care that it's unrealistic. It's pretty!

Narrative Quality (or lack thereof)

To be honest, I still have no idea what the background of the game is. Remember the monologue? Well I don't. Something about a big corporation and you - the badly drawn man with vengeance on his mind. The story is given to you in the afore-mentioned flatly coloured story panels and unnatural facial expressions, and you're supposed to read the boring dialogue that comes up for a sense of it. I'm normally intrigued by narrative and will read to understand the characters. I gave up after the first mission to preserve my sense of self.

A lack of voice acting also means that you're given contextual dialogue in a small box in the lower right of the screen. Mostly comprising, "come back to base. No wait, go check out that odd reading on the radar", or "His death won't be in vain". Thing is, most of this dialogue happens in real time, which means you have to choose between reading the torrid dialogue and surviving (hint: It's not a hard choice, honestly).

"Not now, woman! Holy Fuuuuuu-"

You know what? All this doesn't matter, I assume, as your objectives are always clearly presented to you in the top right. Plus, story isn't why you're buying this game – action is.

Gameplay

Controlling your craft is a little bit of a science. Since it's a top-down shooter you have to master strafing and changing direction in a similar fashion with the old school game Asteroids to avoid the deluge of bullets that will be trying to murder you from all sides. This is confounded somewhat by the fact that you can't see what's behind you, which I don't have too much of an issue with considering that in an actual craft you can't really see behind you either.

Another realistic aspect is the difference between shooting down aerial foes and ground targets. The game assumes most enemies that are engaging you in the air are level with you, so accuracy isn't paramount. Once you've gotten the hang of aiming where the bullets should be vs where the enemy is, it's quite easy to just strafe and pray it eventually hits something.

Once you get to ground targets, that becomes a little more tricky. Since you're not level with your ground targets, accuracy becomes more important. Your bullets (missiles? lasers?) will hit only where you aim, and since you and your target could be moving at differing speeds, it becomes more challenging to nail them down. It adds a level of difficulty to the gameplay that you won't get in many other games.

I died at least twice to take this screen grab. The tank was fine. You're welcome.

This is further confounded by the fact that most of the special weapons you can pick up are Air only weapons. So you could clear the skies around you with a couple of charges, but unless you have the missiles that hit everything, ground enemies can still shred you to pieces.

So far, I've clocked 2 hours of game play and I've died more than my fair share. You get a set amount of lives each round and there are powerups that grant you extra lives, repairs, and energy shields to prolong your life just enough. A small annoyance is the insistence that you can only have one special weapon at a time, but it's negated by the fact that they appear fairly often.

Addictive Replays?

It's a little hard to be talking about replayability considering that I haven't even come close to finishing the game, but with increasing difficulty, repetitive movements (there really are only so many ways you can dodge bullets on a 2D plane) and very little by way of ship upgrades for you to choose from (there aren't any other ships you can buy, you can't buy different weapons, you can't even opt for a different paint job), I can't see this being a game you'd come back to on a daily basis if you have finished the game. Get your achievements, if you can**, and maybe you'll pop in once or twice a month for some gloriously exploding fun.

Verdict

Project Root is a decent game to pass time. It's visually attractive (except for the story panels), and very certainly a challenge you'll find yourself eager to power through, at least for the first few missions.

Rating

*Apologies. Due to this being my inaugural post, some delays were to be expected due to editorial constraints. At 2,.49 USD, this wasn't a bad purchase. For USD 9.99 there are better games out there.
**At the time of writing, Project Root has problems communicating your achievements to Steam. You'll earn them in game, but Steam won't know about it. I hope they fix that soon.

Vinsant Huang does Business Development from day to day when he's not being sucked into a narrative in some way or form.

Categories: Project, Root, Steam, Top Down, WAGS