Barrage Review

Barrage is heavy on two themes. The first is flying around in a hovercraft. The second is blowing the hell out of anything that even resembles a threat. Or a slow-moving blimp. Or a barn. Or whatever.

The game is mostly based around flying to locations, shooting things, and doing so in a certain amount of time. Adding to the confusion is your power meter, which depletes as you take hits. When it empties, you lose ten seconds off your time, and it refills. Run out of time and the game is over. The first level makes you fly through five power pylons before fighting the level's boss, a giant missile-spewing orb. Level two takes place in a large tunnel filled with turrets. Time is, at least initially, very short, so you're forced to collect hourglass icons to earn more time. The game's multiplayer is pretty much the standard "pick up power-ups and shoot the other players" game, although a team mode is also available.

Now, the game would be a nice little shooter, but the horrible control makes it way too frustrating to deal with. The mouse is totally without precision, causing you to overshoot your aim every single time, making the concept of accuracy nothing but a faint, faint memory. The manual claims that the mouse control is like this to "keep things fair between players using different controls," but instead it manages to make the mouse a sloppy, worthless control device.

The graphics in Barrage are decent, and the game runs at a nice, smooth frame rate. The sound effects are nice and fit the game quite well. The mission briefings, relayed to you by a crazy hick, are well written and even funny at times.

All in all, Barrage is just your generic shooter. Fly around, blow up tanks, jets, and towers, repeat if necessary. Improved control really could have helped here, though the lack of variety and uninspired weapon design are culprits as well. If you really liked Incoming, you might want to check Barrage out, but don't expect to get wowed by it.