Score Rush Hot

This game is a mix of a bullet hell shooter with a twin stick shooter. The controls are like Geometry Wars but you're not moving your ship all over the place but rather, it's almost a traditional SHMUP/bullet hell game. The music is intense. There's force feedback. The graphics are fast and amazing.

After playing through Decimation x3 again last night I realized how much fun Xona Games' games actually are when you just wanna get a short burst of action. Score Rush takes it to a whole new level. When I said crisp at the top I meant it. Everything in the game is fine tuned so that dying is truly your fault. It seems almost too easy to wind your way through the oncoming storm of bullets. Basically you are always focusing on 2 or 3 things at once. 1. Bullets 2. Enemies 3. Getting Boosts. This adds a lot of franticness to the game, which is good in this case. My only complaint gameplay wise is that you can't pick your uprgrades, they are just given to you over time. How cool would it be to be able to pick more damage, more speed, shields, bullet spread, etc. instead of just a slow growth of power over time.

The music is also very well done. Try playing the game on mute and then you realize what kind of impact the sound has on the game. The music is probably one of my favorite indie game scores.

Other than the basic game, there is really nothing else offered to you, which is kind of disappointing. That was my main complaint with Decimation x3 as well. Also I would play this game so much more if it had online leaderboards and co-op. Offline is cool, but online would really make this game perfect.

All in all: This game is great, a must buy on the indie game marketplace. You can play for literally 5 minutes and have fun, I just wish it offered a little bit more.

I am going to admit it... when I generally think of XBLIG, I think of cheap badly made games with a very small few exceptions. I've tried plenty and none managed to grab my attention. That is until I saw a clip of this game whilst randomly surfing the internet. I was like "what!? 80pts?? I better download the demo!".

1 minute into the game, I quit and immediately purchased it. If you are longing for a shoot em up fix, this is it. It even puts many premium games to shame.

The setting is simple. Survive as long as you can against a screen full of multicoloured death and mid level bosses whilst trying to reach the end, aiming for a good high-score as you go. What sets this apart from other bullet hell games is that it is actually a twin stick shooter, or rather, a twin stick vertical hybrid. The background doesn't scroll but you can see the influences by the way the enemy pour in from the top of the screen whilst peppering you with multicoloured peas of death.

The controls are spot on and not once did I come across any issues, the 2 guys who made this game have really nailed it. The graphics are perfectly clear which is important when playing a bullet hell game and like all bullet hell games, your ship is huge but has a very small area,about 4 pixels, that is your hit box.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it starts out slow but soon turns into hell. I found myself inching closer and closer to the screen to keep myself concentrating on my 4 pixel hitbox. This really gets my heart pounding as I fight for survival. Well done guys. The soundtrack is also pretty good at keeping you "in the zone".

The only issue I have is the scoreboard. It is only local but, at 80pts, it is really nothing to complain about.

To finish off, I would've quite happily bought this game for more than its asking price. It is that good.

This little gem has provided the kind of enjoyment and thrill that is normally reserved for the top of rollercoasters or a glance of the woman of your dreams.

I suck at Bullet Hell shooters. There i said it. I will likely NEVER see the end screen of Score Rush. It doesn't matter one bit, the feeling of beating your personal best is reward enough. Surviving a few minutes longer, scoring that extra million points, it is gaming greatness.

It's almost like the guys at Xona Games have distilled that mysterious "one more go" factor and have infused Score Rush with it.

I havent even played 4 player Multiplayer yet! I may need to arrange a Score Rush party, and when you start planning your social life around a game you KNOW it has you!

Duality ZF has a lot to live up to, but given that it features a SCORE RUSH MODE i think we are in very safe hands!

Score Rush is the sort of sensory overload that's likely comparable to getting shot into space without so much as a helmet. The colors are dazzling, the explosions are constant, and a oddly-shaped thingamajig can't fire a bullet without the an infinite number of 4th of Julys going off at once. I used to think that even in my old age(29) I could handle whatever the "shump" genre threw at me but I think thirty minutes with this game has caused me to age thirty years.

Since I totally blew past the mid-life crisis and forgot to buy my Ferrari I guess I should talk about why you've already spent your hard-earned dollar on this game. You craved action, you sought danger, you wanted to silence the voices in your head. That guy in the back was saying "Oh No good sir! Thou must purchase a role-playing game so thou canst engorge upon ham-fisted karma decisions and inappropriate cheesecake." There was that other guy sitting next to you whispering "no uh buy a multiplayer FPS so errh you can get huh called nasty words while um getting sniped from miles away...yeah" and then your girlfriend was saying "How about seeing a movie instead?"

Too bad for them however because you bought SCORE RUSH. If you're like me you probably hurt all over. It's that feel-good kind of hurt though because even if the only ass that got kicked was your own it still feels like an accomplishment. Everything about this game is pushing those limits in your head, that part of your brain that comes to life when your square-dealie is so close to hot death its tongue gets burned. This game gets you in the zone instantly and never lets go. It's the kind of pure adrenaline that other games make you work for and at the most its precious minutes out of potential hours.

It's arguable that this game is simply too much of a good thing. After about an hour or so of straight playing I just realized that my right hand was cramped to hell. My eyes aren't faring much better and that headache of mine still hasn't gone away. This is one of those games where it's totally alright to take breaks every 15 minutes. Score Rush is also a bit of a slow starter since the first few stages feel really easy and there's nothing that can be done to speed things up a bit. The best solution for that is to get in closer to the enemies. Higher risk sure but everything has a habit of dying faster at close range, which means more points.

Since my brain isn't completely fried yet I also would have suggested that there was maybe one or two more extra lives available over the course of the game. Yeah I know it's a short one and it wouldn't matter at all if I stopped sucking but...you get where I'm coming from right?

Anyway since you already bought the game I thought up some reasons as to why you should regret your purchase. What the heck are those enemy designs? Random-shapes stopped being cool for eons. These days it's all about schoolgirls on brooms. There's no story either...I mean come on. Storylines are essential to my 2D shooter experience. Remember that time the Vic Viper blew up the planet? You don't get masterful epics like that with ridiculous-looking ships spraying everything until it explodes. There's also a chance you could die while playing this game. Chances are especially high if you're playing this game while driving and/or falling off a cliff. I really doubt it's worth the risk. Thankfully you're too busy playing this game to read the stupid crap I just posted.

Score Rush is a twin-stick shooter with 4 player local co-op play. The bright, neon graphics fit the frantic pace of the game. In addition to the normal shooting you do have bombs available to clear small enemies and all attacks from the screen when things get tough. The shear scope of Score Rush is initial intimidating. There are dozens of enemies and hundreds of bullets to dodge at any given time. However, once you get a feel for the pace of the action it starts to come naturally to dodge while taking out the biggest enemies first. The “overwhelming firepower” mentioned in the game’s description is clearly there with power ups making your ship a virtual bullet hose. The play area is a bit larger than the screen so when you are playing keep in mind that you have a little more room to work with than what you see. When you do eventually die there is a nice breakdown of your statistics with kills, bullets show and bullets dodge being listed with your score.

Global leaderboards and co-op over Xbox Live instead of just local would be nice, but for $1 those are not features that I’d expect. Even playing solo it is well worth the $1 price tag.

~ Original review on VGevolution.com

Hurray for Xona Games! Let me lay my cards on the table. There is no better game under the XBLIG service than Score Rush. Period.

They (Xona Games twin-brother team of two) understand arcade shooters, but more importantly they understand gameplay. They understand the intuitive joys of blasting the sh*t out of anything in site in a relentless chaotic frenzy of retro re-imagined orgy of destruction.

I couldn't give higher praise for a game.

Talk is cheap. Download the trial. You can't escape the automatic buy that awaits shortly after. This game is on a whole new level from the typical farm feed you'll find on XBLIG.

-Zach