Name
Reconquista+Escalation
Author
Dr Lancer-X 
Category
Game
Release Date
2009-06-28
Rating
(4/5)
Tags
Version
1.0
Requires MegaZeux 2.83 or newer.
Downloads
Reconquista+Escalation
Repeating a dull, unchanging existence during the day as an assistant teacher, tormented by horrifying visions during the night, everything you think you know as reality is called into question when you meet an Angel.

Will she provide you with a means to escape this unending existence or is she the vortex that will drag you deeper into madness?
Maxim  said:
Link
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This game is a Day of Zeux effort by Lancer X. He spent the entire 24 hours on it and ended up with something better than a lot of Megazeux games that took months to develop.

It's two games in one, sort of. The game alternates between Reconquista and Escalation segments. If you win, you advance to the next segment. If you lose, you still advance but have to complete the level you lost within a certain number of tries. Each level start advances a day, and if you run out of days before completing all of Reconquista and/or Escalation you get a bad ending.

Reconquista is a lot of fun, but unfortunately is flawed in some places. You can find up to three weapons, and eventually get a powerup that lets you see normally invisible enemies (that is, instead of normally visible enemies, it's like a toggle.) This powerup, called blood vision, is a pretty cool feature.

When you fire your weapons they automatically aim at the nearest enemy. Enemies shoot fast bullets and match the player in firepower. The player's health meter ranges from five to eleven units as you progress through the stages, and most enemies will take around that range of hits to kill. In order to win, you have to focus on moving and timing your shots. You will be dodging around a lot of walls and obstacles if you're playing to win... again, totally awesome. The automatic aim removes the need for the player to slow down and aim their shots.

You might die a few times on the Reconquista stages, but after you figure out the mechanics well enough you're effectively invincible. Even when you get hit there are plenty of health powerups laying around. Still... even if you are good, if you stop focusing on what you're doing you will get shredded up!

Where Reconquista has problems is... it's too long for its relatively low level of complexity. If the game took an hour to two hours to complete, it'd be perfect--but it can easily take double that on the first playthrough. Even with the three weapons and the blood vision, there's not quite enough variation. Other than those the only powerup item restores health. Limited ammo, more varied enemy attack patterns, even some variation in aesthetics between levels... any one of these would have helped a lot! I'll give Lancer credit for not including any switch or key hunts--the game is long but there's no artificial extension of it, which is a very good thing.

In Escalation you fight in a turn-based battle against a horde of enemies that close in at you at varying speeds. Moving, attacking and taking damage all decrease your life meter. Unfortunately it's a bit too easy and the difficulty doesn't pick up. If you can plot a course to the life-restoring powerups while stopping to destroy the faster enemies you'll win easily. Again, it is possible to lose but you really have to not be paying attention to what you're doing.

Of course, the graphics are awesome. Lancer X is the master of procedurally generating beautiful things in Megazeux. The pixel-level animations, particularly the life bar in Escalation, are really impressive. The use of simulated translucency in the Reconquista segments is also one of the best-implemented examples of that particular effect I've seen in a Megazeux game. The smooth scrolling text in the cutscenes is also a really cool effect. On a more basic level, the tiles and color palettes are well-designed.

Music and sound are well-chosen and appropriate for the game, but I do wish that Reconquista had more tracks... you'll be listening to those songs for at least an hour each during your first playthrough, and there's only two of them...

As a Day of Zeux game, this is absolutely tops. Ranked against the entire archive, it's still a damn good game and is well worth your time. Sure, it's not perfect, but it most likely would be a five star game if Lancer had at least 48 hours without sleep instead of 24.