STAR X

"You are your people's last hope in a desperate 'flight for freedom'
You are THE only survivor of a doomed diplomatic envoy, sent to befriend a new alien race. The peace talks were brief! The 'Harask' are not here to co-exist: they are here for 'hard merchandise' - SLAVES. As your party is slaughtered to keep the truth hidden, you take to the skies. pursued by a never relenting hostile force. Only your quick wits and skill as a pilot will preserve your people's freedom."

A 3D generated landscape on a Gameboy Advanced can be considered somewhat of a technical marvel for the system. Considering the tiny resolution, the 3D landscape moves at a brisk pace with plenty of objects within it. However, adding a great game in that space is a much greater challenge and it really misses the mark. If you had only played the first level, you would be forgiven for thinking that this looks and plays like good, fun game. The presentation isn't bad and there is a tiny bit of story between levels but that's probably the better part of the game.

I played the game on normal/medium difficulty and it was enough. To really get any enjoyment out of the game id say play on easy and avoid the frustrations. The game starts out fairly easy but quickly gets frustration and even stupid. You cant target anything. Your reticule appears to move on a 6x4 grid and if the enemies don't fall into position, tough! You collect weapon upgrades as you progress as well as shield refills. These upgrades are important as the game will be very difficult without them especially the bosses. Not to mention some of the boss battles seem outright broken where you are bombarded with enemy fire you can hardly avoid and you have to get into that fire for any hope of lining up your shots. Between levels you get to do an orbital mission and these are fairly easy as the enemy don't or cant attack you unless you stop or get turned round to fly into them, otherwise they just chase you around the level.

Through the later parts of the game the enemy fire is coming at you before you can even see where it is coming from. You are likely going to get hit if you attempt to target any of them. It can be safer to just ignore the enemy and try to stay outside of the fighting to survive. To make matters worse, if the screen is busy with enemies firing at you, the game wont acknowledge you input to fire back. Whilst you get lives, they are not that useful later on. When you are killed you lose all weapon upgrades making it so you cant win and progress. The timed mission to destroy shield generators is especially difficult and id say impossible with no weapon upgrades. The final level .... there are no upgrades or shield regens available. Thankfully the final boss battle wasn't to bad and you can sit there and take the fire utilising a fresh set of smart bombs to do most of the work after losing a life there.

Overall then, something to show off on the Gameboy Advance but only attempt to play through it on easy where everything just melts.

00:00:00 Intro
00:02:47 - Aquess - Part 1
00:05:10 - Aquess - Part 2
00:08:07 - Aquess - Orbit
00:11:00 - Egaon - Part 1
00:13:25 - Egaon - Part 2
00:16:43 - Egaon - Orbit
00:18:25 - Birmen - Part 1
00:21:15 - Birmen - Part 2
00:24:13 - Birmen - Orbit
00:25:54 - Wolf X2 - Part 1
00:27:48 - Wolf X2 - Part 2
00:30:58 - Wolf X2 - Orbit
00:32:53 - Hades - Part 1
00:34:45 - Hades - Part 2
00:38:41 - Hades - Orbit
00:40:04 - Tritopia - Part 1
00:42:02 - Tritopia - Part 2
00:44:45 - Tritopia - Orbit
00:47:31 - Silicon - Part 1
00:49:30 - Silicon - Part 2
00:52:00 - Silicon - Moon
00:55:17 - Ending/Credits
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00:56:57 - Practice mode