Overdriven Reloaded: Special Edition

Genre: Bullet Hell Shmup

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Overdriven Reloaded is a Bullet Hell Shmup that brings to the table a color-switching mechanic. Readers may recall, I thought very highly of Ikaruga another game in this genre that uses a similar color-switching mechanic. However, the results are somewhat different here.

For the majority of the game, there doesn’t really seem to be a whole lot of difference between the colors. One is as good as the next, really. The game does have sections set up like a match-3 puzzle game, where zapping blocks with your laser changes its color, but even here you can just shoot them all with whatever color until they’re all the same.

The other issue I had with this game is that the screen in the game quickly gets filled and becomes needlessly confusing. I’m not talking about a screen filled with bullets like most games in the genre, either. I’m talking about the absurd number of bonus stars that start appearing as you kill enemies, as well as your lasers, which have such a wide spread that they fill much of the screen at any given time. It’s hard to feel I’m all that bad ass when I don’t even really need to aim to hit enemies.

Ultimately, Overdriven Reloaded is a mediocre Shmup. There are some good ideas bouncing around in here, but those ideas were already done better by other games. Go and play one of those instead.

tl;dr – Overdriven Reloaded is a Bullet Hell Shmup that uses a color-switching mechanic like Ikaruga. However, unlike Ikaruga, this game doesn’t seem to know how to use it, and otherwise the game is just a crowded mess – and not in a good way.

Grade: C-

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