Buy Project Root

Anyone remember Zone 66? It was one of my favourite top-down "sandbox" shooters from the early 90s. This game harkens back to that era, both in terms of difficulty and gameplay. Be warned that if you are not experienced at this type of game and in particular, twinstick shooters, even on easy you will find this game an exercise in frustration. It is quite unforgiving...
- Missions last between twenty minutes and an hour and there are no checkpoints! Run out of lives, back to the start.
- Power ups seem to drop at times when you either don't require them (two repairs when I am already at full health, really?), or when it is practically impossible to pick them up without being destroyed. They don't hang around that long either.
- Enemies fire from offscreen, many projectiles will track you for a long time and later enemies lean towards a bullet-hell style. These traits combine to make the airspace very crowded and sitting still for even a moment will be enough to make you very dead. This is where the game really shines; the flawless control and responsive movement of your ship make it a joy to play. It is possible to avoid practically anything, using a good sense of placement and understanding from which direction the next salvo of enemy fire is likely to approach. Unfortunately, the lack of on screen prompts and lacklustre radar make this heavily reliant on the player's intuition. Irrespective of that, there is a real sense of skill and reward, both for careful and ballsy play styles.

There are a decent variety of enemies that are slowly introduced as the game progresses. There are both air and ground targets, which need to be destroyed with an appropriate weapon, similar to both Zone 66 and Xevious. Each enemy variant represents a particular threat and they do force certain responses to deal with them. When you get many types mixed together, the game is at its most difficult and hectic. There is an experience system that awards points at level-up. These points can be used between missions to upgrade your ship. However, even fully upgraded your fire power always feels underwhelming. Players are better off focussing on upgrades that increase agility; this is the main means by which you will stay alive!

Throughout, the graphics are decent and manage to keep up a good frame rate on a mid-spec machine. Enemy designs are standard fare and borrow from just about everywhere, but provide good variety. Explosions in particular are pleasing to the eye. Sound is a little bland, but does the job.

A few minor technical issues cropped up while playing...
- I was unable to confgure my Logitech F310 gamepad. Trying to change the controls in either mode (XBox 360 or F310 Direct Input) just didn't work. I ended up using the default XBox 360 control scheme, which did the job. You are basically forced into a twinstick control scheme to make the game playable anyway.
- Steam achievements didn't work. They are awarded as in-game medals, but the corresponding Steam achievement wasn't activated.
- Enemies occasionally get stuck in the scenery and cannot be shot. Usually not too annoying, but once the enemy was an objective and I couldn't complete the mission.
- I had only one crash to desktop in seven hours of play, which isn't too bad.

This is an enjoyable but slightly repetitive game that rewards skillful play and will be appreciated by top-down shooter fans who are not looking for a quick fix.

To make this game easier to control, you will likely want;

autoclicker (press and hold) for left and right mouse buttons
mouse smoothing off

I actually got real sick of using a mouse and ended up binding everything to the keyboard, and using that.

Controller (twin stick) would be recomended, but I don't have one, so I cannot confirm that it is comptible.

Game review;

Gameplay
Simililar to top down top-scroller shooters, but with freedom of movement - you can fly in any direction, not just "up" or "forward" - this is an interesting idea, and I quite like it.
Enemies tend to start shooting you from off screen. this can get a bit annoying.
All bullets are dodge-able, but you will take a few hits in later levels, when it becomes bullet-hell.
There is an XP mechanic.


Graphics;
Tidy, good looking. for a top-down stype shooter
explosions are fairly well done, but you noice their pre-rendered state on larger ones (hardly an issue)
top/odwn/3d with feeling of real depth (distance)
I feel the camera view should be slightly less top, and more bihind - a compromise between topdown and 3rd person shooter (like SMITE, WOW, Minimum,), to give a wider/longer view out to the front of the craft.
Vertigo inducing. - i started getting motion sickness from the camera.

Sound.
passable, sometimes you get blips and notifications and you have no idea why.

Story.
Whatever... go here, shoot this.
Story based ingame notifications don't warn you that they popped up audibly, so they can be easy to miss if you don't keep an eye on your bottom left corner after every objective.


No save points during missions.

It's an OK game that has some minor flaws that can detract from the experience. I'd suggest a purchase only if you are a fan of the Genre

Why did it have to be bugs?

<edit>
Bugged. Repetetive.
Go play Xevious, far better way to spend your time.
</edit>

People claim this game is hard, I've yet to run into that. Then again, I've only made it to level 2, which has thus far been impossible due to essential ships flying through walls where they become invincible. Might just be me, might not be.
Thrice now I've been unkindly hindered by heavy fighters flying through walls and getting stuck on the wrong side of a barrier.
Them pandas... so sad.
If you still plan on playing this game, which is not a terrible choice, bring a controller. The support is instant and is by far and away the best control scheme.

From what I have played so far, this is a pretty good game. The music isn't too repetative like a lot of other games with a similar feel to this and the combat is a good mix of challenging and well-thought out. Maps are large and take time if you intend to do all of the side stuff, but that's not a bad thing.

If I had one complaint with it, it would be the artwork. All the 3d models and sprites for the game are relatively done well, but when it comes time for the comic-like cutscenes between missions, I cringe, specifically because of the faces. The bodies and mechanics around the characters are pretty well-drawn, but those faces just...I don't really have words for it...

Despite this singular drawback, the game is well done and an enjoyable experience otherwise, Definitely worth checking out.

Computer Spec wise it's very demanding the music is very predictable and a little dull, other than that great game,

I so wanted to like Project Root...But there just to many bugs and not enough variety

Pros
1. You get to shoot stuff and blow it up

Cons (its a long list) From my experience of a play through on easy
1. The explosions feel a little underwhelming, maybe its the lack of a decent level of soundeffects audio (its maxd out but you can barely hear it)
2. Not enough variety in the nme's, there must be about five or size types of flying craft and the same ground based...Its all very samey
3. Lame upgrade system. You earn xp to spend but do the upgrades do anything? Havent a clue as you are stuck with the same dual shooter and rocket combo for the whole game. No variety
4. The special weapons dont stack, they just replace what you had....annoying
5. the nme's will happily spawn right next to you, at one point I sat there shooting an auto spawning ship two inches in front of me
6. nme's (and your own ship) occassionaly gets stuck in the scenary making it impossible to kill.
7. The GFX are bugg'd to high heaven. I fully upgraded by firepower and now all the shots I fire are completely invisible....To top it off the nme's are now firing barely visible black projectiles at me....and on occassion great big squares will come at me...most odd
8. No options mid game
9. Bearing in mind the levels are quite long there is no check point save system.
10. After fighting my way through to the final end game boss for some reason my ship became invulnerable...I just stood there and shot it happily absorbing every bullet on the screen....what an anti climax.

Maybe if they fixed the bugs in this game it would be a whole lot more enjoyable and I could change this to a positive.

I wanted to like this. I tried. But I got bored, fast. I guess it's fine as a pick up and play game, but if you're looking for a game to draw you in and keep your attention fixed then you should look elsewhere.

The good:
Decent graphics
Explosions themselves look alright


The bad:
Repetitive gameplay
Repetitive graphics
Little enemy variation
Little or no damage indications on enemy ships
Explosion animations overlay the enemy ship sprites in a very obvious way
Character artwork is pretty poor
Typos
Music is pretty bad, and repetitive
Only 5 missions, although I didn't even feel like playing them all
Achievements don't register on Steam
Is there a plot?

All in all, this game isn't that fun. However, if you want something super simple and mindless to mop up some spare time with and like this kind of shmup then you might consider buying this. On sale.

A solid game for the approximately 2 UKP I paid for it. However a word of caution: if you suffer for motion-sickness the fixed perspective on the ship and spinning landscape will eventually start making you feel nauseous. This is why, unfortunately, I can only comment on the first level.

If you're looking for a SHMUP fix, do not, I repeat, do not buy this game.

Sluggish controls. Your ship has been smoking too much pot, apparently.
Bad sound design. Seriosly, most enemies explode with a sound of a Very Angry Balloon Popping.
Bad level design. Everything looks very same-y.
Bad weapons design. You're stuck with the same guns for the duration of the game.

And don't get me started about the excuse of a storyline, not to mention dialogues (and fonts! and text formatting!).

Bottom line? Even at a bargain price - don't buy it.

Projectiles from off-camera behind you make this game quite frustrating, no matter how good your reflexes, if you can't see the bullet, you can't dodge it.

The game is not bad, but always having one eye on the radar and off the action to avoid surprise instant damage seems out of place for a fast paced bullet-hell shooter. Maybe some sort of warrning system that lets you know when an enemy behind you starts shooting, anything other than having to constantly look at the radar litterally every second.

Good old time shoot 'em up. Enjoyed playing it although the difficulty bar is quite high. The ability to constantly upgrade your ship gives it longevity. Controls are unique using mouse and keyboard which make it very intuitive to learn. Recommended as a blast from the past!

Action without pause and a lot of adrenaline. The ship control is very precise and the motion of rotation of the camera is just perfect. Love it!

Not too bad, but rather hard game.

Video Review Below:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259104994

A bug-hunters wet dream. Horribly broken menus (not that you can actually access the options in-game, because apparently this is 1995) and the inability to even fix it yourself because the player configs are in encrypted binaries. Menus are both slow to respond, and hard-coded to use xbox360 controller icons, regardless of control preference (oh yeah and the controls menu causes the game to grind to a halt). Which is probably just there to foreshadow the fact that the mouse controls in-game are abysmal and pretty much unusable. The ship will continue to rotate long after you've actually stopped making any input with the mouse, regardless of sensitivity settings - high sensitivity only results in massive over-compensation from any input, and low sensitivity results in the feeling that you're stirring tar. The standard troubleshooting (vsync, pre-rendered frames, etc) will offer you no remedies here, this is all game mechanism.

This could have the best gameplay in the world, but it's completely irrelevant thanks to an atrocious input interface with the user. Of course in reality, the gameplay is nearly as poor; it's marred by the usual suspects - invisible walls (with enemies that can shoot at you through them, but you can't shoot back - oh and they can do this with some standard geometry too), backtracking and just painfully bland & repetitive gameplay.

4/10

Hard as hell, but if you enjoy bullet-hell games, you'll probably like it.
Could use a bit better sound assets for machine gun, but that's not a big deal.

More details in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrLO1YQqaM

Smooth gameplay. The open world makes is very fun to play.

the cammera angle gives you the feeling you're craning your neck, the flow of combat and objectives feels clunky and arbitrary, the asthetics are meh.

Project Root has a very good pace. Feels like old school games with an easier difficulty level (still could be hard for today standards) and a very responsive control. I do not agree with the comments about rear shots are not predictable. Just keep playing a while. When you get enough practice you can avoid any bullet. Just 45 minutes of practice when posting this. This is not a hardcore game from my perspective, but it may require some training if you are not shooter veteran. DIFFICULTY SPOILER: Go direct for the objectives to avoid losing unnecessary health.

Intense. A lot of fun if you like top down shooters. The 360 degree twist on the old genre is awesome. Oh and your not going to beat this in a couple of hours either. I'm certainly getting my monies worth.

the more you play it the more you gonna like it
i love this game
bit hard to play in the beginning ...once you know how to play it becomes more easy to play
if you like shooters ...this one you must have