Saviors or Star Saviors annoys me because it is not spelt with a letter 'u'. It's a game that I picked up with a Steam coupon back in February. It's a Bullet Hell shooter with influences from games like Raiden.

There wasn't any issues getting the game running, but I could not find any way to control it other than WASD. Mouse and Gamepad refused to be recognised and the game is one where you want finer control as the difficulty is rather high and the keyboard can come off as stiff.

Saviors comes with a campaign, survival, and 2-player co-op mode. The campaign has a rather generic story of 'OMG aliens are attacking, quick shoot them why I your boss does not give you all the information because military'. So yeah, not much to it and you can happily miss the rather stupid text and damn awful human 3D face renders.

Nothing you do appears to matter in the campaign mission to mission. The whole thing is directly linear and honestly, not worth bothering with.

To be fair this genre of games rarely needs anything to keep you going through it, and the only genre related title I recall paying attention to way the fantastic Tyrian. It's just that this one is truly inane to sit through.

The basic idea is to shoot everything in one wave per level. Occasionally there is a boss fight or hero enemy that requires more hits to take down.

Levels use a 3D background that scrolls and changes direction beneath the player while keeping the camera fixed in a top down position the whole time. The background is fairly desaturated and does not get in the way of the action.

Sadly there are few interesting uses of the 3D effect capabilities. Aside from a few tunnel effects and a brief few seconds popping outside of earth into space it pretty much just scrolls slowly beneath the player which badly juxtaposes with the speed of the action itself.

Enemy design is also rather bland. There's not a huge amount of variety of what is sent towards you, but I do appreciate the ' coming next ' mechanic that the game uses. Before ships appear, a red shadow will show <2 seconds at the sides of the screen. If the enemy would also appear firing a laser then that will appear too.

It's a nice touch on what to expect from wave after wave of bland metallic enemy craft and allows you to plan out attack pattens with a little forwarning.

On the positive side, there is a decent amount of weapon types and the three selectable ships all have different upgrades.

No weapons drop during the level itself, before starting a mission you select your loadout and specials. Bullets, Shells, Bombs, Lasers, Spreads, Missiles, Homings are all available.

There can apply to both a primary weapon and secondary, by default they both shoot forward but hitting (default key of) 'C' will swap the secondary to shoot mostly to the sides. Enemies will come from many different directions and there is a decent amount but not overwhealming or twitch of switching over each level.

Points are racked up over each round with their own level score, each tier unlocks a slightly more powerful version of each weapon. And every so often a new weapon will unlock and a new perk point will become available.

Perks are different for each selectable ship and provide increasingly powerful upgrades. They may increase weapon damage, hull resistance, or unlock abilities such as EMP bursts on shield loss.

Unfortunately there are a number of issues with this game. You can see the effort that was put into it and unfortunately not quite making it. The difficulty is also rather high, even on easy.

And yet... I enjoyed playing it the time I did. Despite my gripes the game was fun to play and I didn't feel the need to shut it down and uninstall in protest.

If you like bullet hell shooters or more difficult shumups, it is worth a go. The game is not terrible, just short of average.

Oh, and part of the music sounds like something from sandstorm.

Game Acquisition: Purchased with coupon
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 19 March 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
Processor: 1.8 GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS or Intel HD 3000
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 550 MB available space