Armed Seven is a shmup that is heavily reminiscent of many military retro shooters.
The Massive War
This game focuses on a huge conflict between two sides armed with hundreds of suits. As you probably have already guessed you are the lone pilot who can handle the massive enemies rampaging through allied front lines.
The Art and Music of Armed Seven
Both the art and sound of this game come straight out of the earlier eras of shmups. It has pounding military soundtracks that go well with the setting. Overall it works very well together.
The Gameplay of Armed Seven
So here is a check list of fun elements of classic games this one uses:
- A selection screen for your weapons to customize each one
- A charging system which powers your strongest weapons
- Massive bosses that fill a quarter of the screen or more and are modeled like giant vehicles or battlesuits
Other than that it’s your basic non-bullet hell shmup. You see shots, you dodge shots. You fire your massive weapons and the bosses go boom. The controls are tight and the later bosses have large amounts of bullets to keep experienced players ready. It does start out a bit easy but that improves later on as you would expect.
4/5 Classic Retro Done Well
Armed Seven does everything classic shooters did to near perfection. From the retro music to the high quality 2D it has everything you would want from a classic title. From the excellent music themed for the era to the nice art. The only place where it falls short is it doesn’t really try anything new with the shmup formula. This lost it some points with us when so many other shmups, even from the same publisher (Ether Vapor) do try new things. Despite that the package is so solid we had to give it a few points back. It does everything it attempts very well. If you are a fan of the shmup genre this is a very enjoyable game. It’s also a very good value if you get it in the Groupees bundle.
