XenoRaptor is a Twin Stick top down bullet hell shooter where you play a Cybernetic Space Dragon and shoot chainsaw aliens spaceships in Solo, Split-Screen, or Co-Op mode. These thoughts focus only on the Solo mode.

While I'm not good at Twin Stick games (Mouse and Keyboard user here!), I do like the fast paced games. I like Dragons. And the game developer is from my home state and based in Adelaide.

I first came across XenoRaptor at AVcon in 2014. They had it set up for KB+M there and I was able to play with the build they had running. At the time I could see the potential it had, but as I was with two other people and had already spent time talking to other devs I was dragged along to whatever other event was happening on the day and only played for 5 minutes or so.

I honestly though I already had this one. So when it showed up on Steam as unowned I purchased it to play this Saturday morning.

As with other similar genre games I've talked about. I died. I died a lot.

Unfortunately while I enjoyed the game, I didn't enjoy dying as much in this one as in others. There's not so much a difficult spike as a steady increase until you reach the boss battles. A few of these I was instakilled from afar, and with having not come across that boss before and a fair amount of play time to reach them this was more than a little frustrating.

While there are methods for learning how to beat them and to trick them into moving/shooting into directions you want, I could find no trial session to learn their routines.

There is a target practice mode, where enemies float around and don't shoot back, but this is more to test the weapon loadout than anything else. Or perhaps to releave stress by shooting those chainsaw bastards

The rate of unlocks is much much slower but is at a rate where they do feel like decent rewards for progressing, as opposed to time spent playing. I only unlocked a few during the f86m but they do allow different play styles.

You can remap Primary and Secondary how you want, swap them around, or use the same for both. There's no real advantage for doing so unless you really really like one type of weapon and don't want to accidentally hit another one.

Aside from choosing the weapon's type, you can add unlockable modifiers that change weapon spread, area of effect, recharge and drain, speed, and size. All depending on what weapon you choose. This eventually brings out a large number of combinations that allow experimentation and replayability.

The hanger allows you to customise your Cyber Dragon with various colour sliders. It is pretty much cosmetic. You can make one shiny looking critter though!

The screen centres on your dragon, and you can sniper-look by shifting it in certain directions. However there is a lot of content on the screen at once and that little extra hint may be required for some players.

On the enemies themselves. There's a great variety of ones to encounter. The basic mobs you face off with are UFO looking things with chainsaw blades around their rim. Coming in three different sizes they're all fairly basic to kill; large ones move slow and can be pushed away with the rail run to change their aiming area, while smaller ones swarm around and were best hit by a bullet spread. Very soon you start encountering other types. Various generic space ships that shoot in large arcs. Ships that fly far away from you then charge inwards. Ships that circle at just over the edge of your firing rage where you need to boost thrusters and target with clear shots. Ships that explode on death and damage you if you are too near. Ship ships that spawn tiny midges of enemies on death.

While the pace of the game can make them hard to tell apart and the silhouettes are not that distinguishable right off, you can grab a fairly good idea on what they are by how they move in your view, and on the radar map in the lower left.

The only advice I can give is to ignore that map until you are down to the last few enemies, and at the start of a wave to see where they are coming form. It's position and the speed of the game has caused my poor dragon to be obliterated more than several dozen times.

In the end, my issues with XenoRaptor are really down to my own slower preference of games and just being 'not very good at this one.

It looks decent. The music is capable 'space urgency' genre. It plays quite well. And I do love the variety of unlocks and enemies that can be found in it.

Well worth look if you've a passing interest in the genre. And one day, when I can spent the time to build up my own levels from their usual turn based combat games, I'll get further into it than I did by not dying as much as I do.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on Sale
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 06 February 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

OS: Windows XP
Processor: Pentium dual core 2.5ghz
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000
Storage: 500 MB available space