Omega Strike review for Xbox One

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Miss Metal Slug? Or even Contra? You can scratch that itch with Omega Strike

Based on those great games, Omega Strike brings good gameplay and decent difficulty for the style.

Omega Strike tells a simple story: the evil Doctor Omega and his army of mutants are heading toward world domination. In their way, however, stands a band of freedom fighters. This is where you come in, controlling three characters, Sarge, Bear and Dex, each with different abilities.

Sarge, the team leader, has as his default weapon a battle rifle, similar to an AK-47, while Bear offers a bouncing grenade launcher and is able to push boulders; Dex uses a short-range, highly powerful shotgun, and is faster and can double jump. At first you can switch among the three characters easily by pressing a button. But at the start of the adventure they will be separated; however, as the story goes on you recover them. And as you go through the maps, which are not linear, you’ll have to explore to get gold and items, and with them you can upgrade NPCs throughout the game.

GAMEPLAY

Here is one of the game’s strong points: great gameplay, with a good button combination, and precision, no bugs, well-fitted hit boxes. As you advance through the maps, you’ll need to use each of the characters as much as possible, and there are areas where each is essential to access them. Unfortunately the game has no auto-saves; the “save capsules” are scattered around the map, but they are far from each other, something that can become frustrating, due to dying at random moments.

Something else that can also bother, and which I personally found a major negative, is that if you clear the whole screen, leave it and come back right away, the enemies will be in the same place, shooting at the same moment, which makes it formulaic and ends up “easy”. It’s not a very big problem to kill them several times, since your team of fighters is at a level above any enemy you might meet, but it can be tiring to kill and kill the same enemies. The Bosses are Mega Man style, but they should have a weak point; sometimes it gets tiring having to deal so much damage to them.

Buying skills is essential to advance in the game, especially the damage increase ones and, of course, health, which will help a lot.

AUDIOVISUAL

Graphically the game fits its proposal: a 2D Metroidvania, very colorful, with various scenarios and objects on the screen. But the soundtrack stands out, a great remix of the most classic games of this style, with electronic touches, which makes it all feel like the game has more action, and changes according to the map. So much so that the soundtrack is available for purchase separately, Omega Strike Original Sound. I guarantee it will give you a great sense of nostalgia.

CONCLUSION

Omega Strike is a great game for those who enjoy a pure-action 2D platformer with a bit of challenge. Although it sometimes becomes repetitive, because you’re always killing enemies the same way, the game is still a good purchase.

Fun: 6
Audiovisual: 7
Gameplay: 6

The version tested was for Xbox One.