Death Ray Manta SE

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

Death Ray Manta is a Two-Stick Shooter in the same vein as Geometry Wars, where you’re in a neon-soaked arena full of enemies and need to shoot everything with your fish. This game was originally released on iOS in 2013 and subsequently brought to PC, with a Nintendo Switch version seeing release in 2020.

Death Ray Manta isn’t the sort of game you play for hours. It’s not even the sort of game you play for minutes. A typical session of this game seems to last an amount of time measured in seconds, and the game highlights this by rushing through everything. Kill the last enemy on-screen and you will instantly get a level complete screen and then instantly be ushered to a new level which you’ll instantly start. Those with severe attention deficit disorder may enjoy this sort of thing, but for just about anyone else, it is extremely disorienting.

While this game may be great for those with ADD, those who suffer from seizures should be warned to stay far, far away. This game tries to throw as many bright, flashing colors at you as possible, and the presentation actually makes the gameplay more difficult, as there’s so much going on that it’s extremely difficult to parse. Add to that an unintelligible computer-generated vocalization every few seconds when you clear a screen (drowning out the otherwise decent electronic soundtrack) and the entire presentation here just feels like chaos.

I’m sure there are some who will find Death Ray Manta’s extremely rushed pace and busy visual presentation to be delightfully chaotic, but for me it was just one big gigantic mess. As someone who loves a good Geometry Wars-style Two-Stick Shooter, I came away from this game very disappointed… and more than a little confused and disoriented. Unless the sound of a chaotic mess of a game appeals to you, stay away from this one.

tl;dr – Death Ray Manta is a Two-Stick Shooter that is extremely fast-paced to the point of being disorienting and confusing, something made worse by the game constantly flashing bright colors at you. There may be some out there that this game appeals to, but most will find it a chaotic mess.

Grade: D+

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