Games Review: Astro Avenger 2 by Sahmon Games

If there’s anything I love more than RPG genre games, it’s flying shooter arcades. In fact, it’s the very earliest game arcade game I’ve ever played.

Remember when Windows was still in 95 and there wasn’t any Pinball game, there was this sci-fi jet-fighter game. I totally forgot its name (it was so damn long time ago, bleh!) but some of my fondest memories of visiting my grandmother in Tangjung Malim was playing on my uncle’s PC and shooting the crap out of midget enemy ships on pixelated visual.

After dearest NekWan passed on, I still hadn’t changed. Still love flying shooter arcade.

This gem I found is from Sahmon Games production. Yes, I haven’t heard of the gamehouse, but apparently this game is a sequel from the first one by Divo Games. Yes, I haven’t played that game either, but the reviews of the first games sounded pretty good.

And from the online buzz, second game sounded to be better.

Astro Avenger 2 by Sahmon Games


Rocket-pigs eats your ‘dirty strings.’

The story is short and sweet, little to no characterization, which, despite my stance support for in-depth storyline in games reviews, I really don’t mind it all that much in shooters.

Must be the adrendaline. Gameplay people, it’s the gaaaaaaameplay!!

After the first wave, a new order had risen and human are actively colonizing the distant planets again. Then comes a whole host of alien ships with bigger and badder asses marauding and taking over the human colonies, raping the field and burning the women.

Boy, that is evil.


Awww, look at my babies. They take care of mommy-ship very well.


F**kf**kf**kf**kf**kf**kf**kf**kf**k...!

Storyline:
Short and sweet, not much interesting to me. Other than a background story, there’s no special characters, no dialogue, not even an angry supervisor with a volatile temper, a bad comb-over and spitting half-chewed cigar in a Russian accent. Just your ship, a secret weapon and an alien population of 60 trillion and reducing.

Oooo, really fast reduction, me likes.

Gameplay:
Now here’s where it gets interesting. What I usually do with space shooter is keep holding down the left mouse button, stay to bottom of the screen and watch out for the enemies’ laser and the rockets (mostly the rockets).

I call it the ‘drunk flying’ strategy since you flying all over the place. I still do that but with great restraint now.

Your ship is included with the laser’s battery packs that recharge themselves. Continuous firing makes it go really low and that’s really shit when you get in a tight spot with these blue alienships with mean guided missles (I call them Rocket-pigs).

Your currency is plasma, which you use for repairs, upgrades, your own set of rockets and having little baby droids watch your all-360 degress. I can get stronger lasers but I still prefer laser no. 3 aka dirty strings, because it’s so effective.

Visual:
Awesome. I liked the damage look on the ship as your life stat goes low. The animations’ aren’t superific but they they’re all pretty sexy hot. I buy each rocket class just to see how it blows up (stay away when your nuclear misslles blows though; can cause collateral damage).

The best part is that the screens isn’t slow or choppy and I use a piece of crap that’s only pretending to be a PC. *hehehe!*

Music and Sound:
Nothing superific but I can definitely say that it does not suck. I usually turn off the sounds but I liked how certain little aliens occasionally give this digitize little ‘oww’ after I killed them.



Using the Immortality shield, I turn myself into a hamsterball-cum-wrecking-ball. Too bad it doesn’t last very long.


Big Boss Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have used up the immortality shield so quickly.

My own helpful tips for playing Astro Avenger 2:

- Adjust mouse sentitivity to suit your hand-eye coordination.

- Be mindful of your battery packs. Your laser gun slows down when it gets too low and that’ll be a b***h against the Rocket-pigs.

- Keep upgrading your first and second laser weapon to full potential. Once you get at least new ship No. 3, then use money to upgrade new laser weapons, preferably new laser weapon no. 3. Having new ships before new laser weapons means that your upgraded battery packs won’t run dry too quickly by your shiny new gun.

- Once ship upgraded, keep holding left mouse button while flying at all times. I managed to get best ship inside World 3.

- Forget having babies in the earlier levels. Upgrade your ship past puberty first.

- Stay close to your babies. They tend to wander off. Better not have babies if your favourite strategy is ‘drunk flying’.

- While in earlier levels, sell all your rockets. This way, you get new pack when you kill the first wave of alien ships. However, remember to stock up with at least 15 rockets prior to big boss battle (laser does very little damage).

- When you see the Big Boss, preferably to use laser no. 3 or no. 4 (auto track-and-kill). Keep to sideways of screen. Best applied by getting behind Big Boss, giving you 3 seconds relapse before it literally turns over and upside-down, spitting its shit at you again.

- See Last Boss.
- Last Boss is hell to kill.
- Stock up on shiplives and plasma (money).
- Get lots of plasma; sell lesser rockets leftover.
- Secret Weapon needs Plasma; nothing else can kill Last Boss.
- Kill Last Boss.
- Die Last Boss, die.

PS: Downloads for this game can be found at Reflexive Arcade. If you want the cracked version, ask me nicely.