Chaos Field

Evoking memories of Ikaruga, one of my old favorites, Chaos Field is the latest shooter that I've gotten my hands on. Designed to let you jump between two parallel dimensions in the middle of gameplay, pound away at bosses in the game's five furious levels, any shooter fan should be familiar with many of the concepts played with in Chaos Field. The question is, were those concepts put to good use?

To break it down, you've got two things to do in a game like this. Survive, and fight back. Thanks to the evolution of the shooter, survival has become an actual established gameplay mode, as games started incorporating a timed encounter system. The idea? Simple, just defeat your opponent in the time allotted. If you do so, expect a big point bonus. If not, no worries, the game goes on to the next chapter. That one small change meant that you could spend your entire game dodging, without firing a single shot, and compete with people that blasted their way through a title. Although Chaos Field plays into this, it isn't really optimized for it like Ikaruga was. A lot of your point collecting requires you to destroy enemies, and there's so much gunplay in this title that trying simply to survive is pretty difficult.

Chaos Field gives you a main weapon and two special weapons, but you also come equipped with a pair of laser swords that can destroy many of the enemy shots before they do damage to your ship. In addition, at nearly any time, you can jump dimensions to an alternate universe version of your battle. The normal world seems easier and calmer, while the alternate world features enemies that fill your field with gunfire. This presents you with quite a challenge, should you go seeking it.

Finally, the game is decently fun, a bit short, and nice entertainment for a group of friends. Basically, while I don't enjoy playing non-party titles among friends, this game has a certain psychedelic look that keeps it from being boring to the general observer.

In everything but gameplay, this game is basically standard fare. It isn't too often that we see shooters like Ikaruga come out, so I like finding them, but I think this shooter doesn't quite reach the levels of some old classics, like Einhander. All in all, if you're a shooter fan, this is a good fun time.