Moons
could be considered a souped-up version of the old arcade game Galaxian,
you have waves of enemies ships in a space-invaders alike formation,
and they not only shoot at your ship, they also fly into your direction,
trying to hit you. But I said "souped-up" version, so
in Moons you get scrolling background, limited vertical movement,
power-ups, bosses and all this stuff you expect in a game from the
90s. But the cliche questions always rises: is it any fun?
The
plot in Moons is your shmup standard: You have the mission to capture
the four moons from the aliens, bla bla bla etc. We all know any
reason to kick some alien butt is a good reason, so let's just skip
this boring part.
The
graphics in the game are very functional, the backgrounds are very
generic, and the sprites just do their job. Very average stuff.
The
sounds could be rated..well, functional again. The music is only
played at certain points in the game, and all in all, it sounds
very uninspired (Funnilly enough, the best music in the game are
in the title screen and the loading screen, not exactly what you
will stay listening for a long time.). The sounds effects are your
standard shmups stuff.
Having
all this average feeling in GFX and SFX, you probably is expecting
average gameplay too, right? Well, yeah, you are right. You have
just one weapon that can be powered up by getting the P icons (Increasing
power) or the L icons (Increasing fire rate). You have instant smart-bombs,
shields that work very much like in Gradius (Only protecting from
shots in the front), and side options that work pretty much like
your average side options, except they can be shot and destroyed
by the enemies.
The
enemies waves aren't much inspired and they are all too much similar
to each other. After a few waves you fight a mid-boss that looks
like a brain, and moves from left to right and back, shooting at
you (The mid-bosses are the same in every level.). Then you get
a few more waves until you face the boss, a big ship that behaves
exactly like the mid-boss (Again, the bosses are the same in every
level.).
Sometimes
you get a bonus round, and they seem to appear at random. Enemies
appear from the left, moving fast across the screen, and you have
to shoot them. Those sections are really boring, and we could live
without them. The music played in those bonus rounds is horrible.
The
enemies aren't very much varied, you have just about 5 or 6 different
enemies in the whole game, and except by a big circular ship and
the walls that need a larger number of shots to be destroyed, they
all behave in the same way.
The
difficult is nicely set, the first stage being very easy, and the
fourth (last) stage being damn hard. The last boss will take some
punch to be beaten (even although he looks and behaves like every
other boss, he shoots at a scary rate), but with the repetitiveness
of the game, I bet you will get bored before you get there.
Rating:
Graphics: 60%
Sounds: 65%
Gameplay:55%
Overall: 55%
Moons
- Cosmos - 1992
