Devastator

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Devastator is a 2-Stick Shooter released in 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game takes a page out of the Geometry Wars book when it comes to the style of 2-Stick Shooters, with players taking on abstract enemies designed to look like simple shapes.

The presentation here is good, using glowing neon-style 2D visuals accompanied by a catchy synthesized soundtrack that does a great job evoking the arcade atmosphere that this style of game was borne from.

The gameplay here is mostly good too, with players fending off hordes of enemies in three different game modes, with enemies either coming in waves, in separate levels, or in an amalgamation of the two that has the arena changing as you fight, giving players a few different options for the overall game style.

However, I do have a few complaints. Players have multiple different firing patterns to swap between, but all seem far too visually and functionally close to each other to matter. In addition, the game’s difficulty seems overly high compared to other games in this genre, and a large part of that has to do with the way this game will gradually spawn unkillable red enemies that you can only try to avoid as you hunt down other, more vulnerable enemies.

Overall, Devastator is a solid 2-Stick Shooter that doesn’t do anything to revolutionize the genre, but is mostly a solid entry in that genre. Plus, at $7, it’s relatively inexpensive. If you’re looking for a solid, challenging 2-Stick Shooter, this one is worth trying out.

tl;dr – Devastator is a 2-Stick Shooter with neon-style visuals and gameplay reminiscent of the Geometry Wars games. It’s a bit overly-hard and not all of the features work as well as one would hope, but this is still a good entry in the genre.

Grade: B-

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