Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jan 10, 2014

  Jump to the end for a quick conclusion. This is a hard one to review. Really Big Sky is a twin stick shooter, a bit bullet-hell-ish at times with. I really enjoyed the first couple of hours I played it, but it soon revealed itself. There are several thing I really like about this game, but their implementation leaves a lot to be desired, specially from a balance standpoint. I'll start with the pros of Really Big Sky: -It looks great! Even from the screenshots you can see that, but it looks much prettier in motion. There are a few resolution issues, but I was running it at 720p and it looked pretty good. I used this game has a pause between work, so playing in a smaller window didn't realy bother me. -Several modes. There is a classic mode, which includes bosses, events, scores, and shop in which you buy upgrades. There are modes that focus on difficulty, not attacking, giving a retro feel to the game, for just relaxing without worrying about scores and dying etc. So, there is choice, that's a plus. -Shop in the Classic mode let's you upgrade the parts you prefer and give you a sense of progression (which is also one of its faults) -Very detailed information. Everytime you end a run you get a score screen with more entries than anyone needs, really. And also a comparation to your average run, having the player strive to get better. Besides, there's a library with information about modes, events, bosses, upgrades, and so on. That's good, although it's way too detailed, and I doubt that anyone would go out of their way to read it all. I think that showing the entries as tips throughout loading screens would be more useful. -Bosses respect certain patterns, which change according to difficulty. -Decent variety in enemies, events and locations. -The music was pretty good. Not really my cup-of-tea, but I see some people really enjoying. Plus, it fit the context of the game. Now, the problems I have with it, some of them inherent with the pros' bad implementation, in my opinion: -The visuals are full of particle effects and filter changes, which can get a mess too often. Between those changes, you'll often lose track of what is on the screen, and what damages you or not. Most of the times, you'll die from something you didn't see. Also, it has performance issues later in the game, where particle effects are too many. I have a GTX660Ti and a 3.4GHz Quad Core... and it dropped to 5 fps at one time. That's pretty bad. But it ran mostly well on it. Still a reason to beware. -Bugs. Well, everytime I quit the game it crashed. That's not a big deal. Everytime I tried to see the Scores (as this is mostly as arcade game), it crashed. That's a problem now. And highly diminished the game's value. If there is no one to beat, why would I play more of it, after a while? Score attack games are fueled by.. well, score. This game has it broken. There are also a lot of people who can't get the game to run. -Dificulty Curve and balance. This is the worse part of the game. In the beginning, you're essentially running on trial and error, dying over and over until you learn how to get through certain things. But that's ok, learning the patterns and so on. But, as you progress through the game, it just gets a blurred mess in which there is no skill, and your score is mainly dependent on what you buy from the shop. And luck with the events you get. It's more of a grind-fest than struggling to get better at the game, since all you do after a while is to upgrade the ship and hope that the screen doesn't get too crumped with enemies and filters. -All the modes are too similar to increase the game's longevity too much. There's no drive to really play them, since most don't change too much about the game. The big one being Pacifist, in which you can't shoot, only dodge. ===================================================================== So, conclusion. This is a game that is pretty, although relying entirely on particle effects and filter to achieve so, which often gets very messy. Progression is through grind and trial and error rather than skill, which isn't very good either. BUT, what I've played of it, was pretty enjoyable. The game feels good, for 3-3.5 hours. After that, with scores broken, it loses momentum and gets grindy and repetitive. If you're looking for a shoot-em-up to play for a few hours, this will be fun. If you're looking for a game to last you, or just a very good game... pass this one up. It's full of flaws and bad implementation, despite being a fun and well thought game in its core. I have to say, it feels satisfying whenever you score in the millions, but you also realize that it was more luck than skill. It is a fun game, sometimes, but I can't think of it as a good game. It seems to follow Boss Baddie's games' trend. Really neat concept, nice art direction (although too many annyoing effects), but then those games try to be bigger than they are with too many badly implemented mechanics. Please, keep it simpler. And polish them a bit more after release. I understand that other projects and games are more important than old ones, but several things are simply broken, and there are people paying for it. Cheers!
• gamedeal user

  Nov 12, 2013

  It's pewpewpew with a good dose of LSD and some cocaine. It's great.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 30, 2013

  Really Big Sky is a twin stick shmup with a lot of personality. It's psychedelic, crazy and very fun! You can equip your ship with more powerful weapons and shield. The difficult is just right, but you can make it harder buying ultra upgrades that last one round. The levels are randomly generated, so you'll never play the same match. Bring your friends! This game supports four players in local co-op. It's worth it? Yes! You can be entertained for hours and the price is cheap. If you like arcade shooters, get it!
• gamedeal user

  Dec 27, 2015

  "pretty" "artsy" visuals aside, Really Big Sky is basically a game that fills in a checklist of how NOT to design a shmup. The visuals are simply "crazy" and not in the good, Crimzon Clover sort of way. All of the post-processing effects that do not interact well with each other at all make it hard to see what's going on, and the lack of level design and spongy enemies make playing Really Big Sky a confusing and ultimately pointless experience. (The worst offender is the "retro" mode, which only looks retro if 60's acid trip raves are what you consider to be "retro" in videogames.) Additionally, the gameplay is not at all noteworthy or creative. The only unique mechanic in this horizontally-scrolling twin-stick shooter is the "drill" option, which allows you to drill through certain objects and collect items. Although this could be fun, the game doesn't do much with it, largely due to the lazy procedural generation and simplistic obstacles, which leads me to my next point, the game is laughably easy - you can take many hits before biting it, and all of the enemies and bosses have extremely simple attack patterns that pretty much everyone has seen before. you may ask "so how does the game introduce challenge over time?" and the answer to this is that it instantly kills you by some kind of hazard or enemy that enters at speeds that you could not reasonably react to, and since the game is randomised it's not as though you can reliably memorise them. Needless to say, this is incredibly lazy game design that any arcade game worth its weight in quarters could not get away with. This isn't even mentioning the obnoxious narration that goes on throughout the game (which at least when I played it, you could not disable). Hearing a sterotypical british guy say "oohhhhh you tit" every second time you die is cute the first couple of times you hear it, but quickly becomes grating. Really Big Sky is a game filled with unnecessary additions weighing down the otherwise simplistic and boring gameplay, that tries to excuse this fact by shoving in post-processing effects and obnoxious narration to try and be "artistic". Even worse and even more overrated than Sine Mora. Avoid.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 30, 2013

  This game [b]was[/b] really great. Easy controls, beautiful visuals, simple navigation and straight-forward goals with many different kinds of gamemodes. This was a really great game. Then they fucked up the graphics... I can't even play it anymore, literally. The game is locked to 720p, and when you attempt to change it to anything else, your game will pretty much be destroyed. There used to be great upscaling to better fit any screen's resolution, but the developer took it out for some...reason... Whenever I try to play now, on my 1080p monitor, the game glitches and fucks up beyond my comprehension. Even when I set it to its locked resolution, my cursor is restricted! Sometimes it'll be stuck in a corner and can go nowhere, and sometimes it'll be restricted to a small box in the very middle of the screen, making it impossible to aim or click on anything. Also, let me not forget about the constant DirectX setups that always occur when I start the game... Every time I have to go through a setup just to play it, and it seems to fuck up the game even more each time... Seriously, it's unplayable at this moment. I would recommend this game. I desperately want to recommend this game, but I keep hearing people have my problem with the graphics, and I would never recommend that experience. I'm really sorry. I loved this game, but I can't tell anyone to try it out anymore in this state. BUYER BEWARE!!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2018

  Okay, first off, this is more of a standard horizontal shooter than a "twinstick shooter". Sure, you do fire with the right stick, but "twinstick" implies movement on a 2D plane while shooting at 360° around you is a large component of gameplay. Here, there's forced horizontal scrolling, and barring a few sneak attacks from the top or bottom, enemies appear from the right, so it's just a variation on Gradius rather than Geometry Wars. (I'm sure someone, someone who's an insufferable pedant on the spectrum just like I am, will try to cyber-fistfight me for the above opinion, but The Truth is a hill worth dying on) Anyway, everything the game has you do is tedious. It's random and visually overwhelming in the worst ways, and soon you realise how bored you are and wait for the last card to drop before uninstalling. In the heyday of XBOX LIVE INDIE GAMES, radiangames made basic, kinda samey, but very satisfying twinstick shooters, with just the right amount of visual flair. It's too late to throw them a few bucks on XBLIG, but I think they have a game or two on here. If you want a cool-looking Geometry Wars ersatz, probably look there. This game has none of what you want. And heck, if what you want is a flashy horizontal shooter, or a fun one that makes sense, there's legions of those on Steam. Not trying to be too nasty here, but the target audience for Really Big Sky is basically no one.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 23, 2017

  Two Really Big problems for this game: - The game itself is not hard, you just get killed by things you can't see, or if you can see them, you've literally never encountered it before and there is no indication that it will kill you. It's more frustrating than skill intensive. - The design seems to contradict itself. On one hand, the game wants you to play it over and over, to have the satisfaction of upgrading your ship. On the other hand, the game builds up each session painfully slowly, instead of throwing you right into the action. Overall, here's what a play session looks like: slay exceedingly easy enemies for two minutes, some crazy visual effects happen for no discernable reason, run into some invisible boulder and die. Repeat. Not what I would call gratifying.