Operation STEEL

[i]---see where this game landed on my SHMUP tier list beneath this review!---[/i] This roguelike shmup plays A LOT like [b]Steredenn[/b]. It's not quite on the same level, but it does enough to make for a pretty fun experience. While the game boasts 20 or so levels, it feels more like the game has 5 levels and the other levels are copies of these with minor variations. This game lets you choose between 2 stages each time, branching path style, much like in something like [b]G-Darius[/b]. Actually that game springs to mind for more reasons, like how there's a fair number of fish-inspired ships in this game. In some levels it can get a bit tricky to track your ship. Some enemy bullets can be the same colour as coins (this colour of bullet is kind of rare though). I found it manageable for the most part, but this did irk me at times. Once you beat all of the levels and the main game, there are achievements for boss rush mode, time attack and beating hard modes 1 through 10. I don't think I'm quite hooked enough to go that far. So while this game has its shortcomings, I actually had a lot of fun with it. What's there is good, just not quite as good as [b]Steredenn[/b].…

Serviceable shooter, it's not anywhere close to the true greats of the genre, but it's all around not bad and fairly cheap, while kinda obvious this is the designer's first game. So there are a lot of little issues here that we should go into first: is it a perfect game? Absolutely not. Not even close. Some really notable issues that stand out are things like the attacks from yourself and from enemies aren't really clear which is which, and it's very easy to lose track of yourself, even with your hitbox display turned on (which you have to do in options, it's not on by default). Part of this is a lack of colour-coding enemy attacks to be different from yours, but part of it's also that attacks from enemies can sometimes move backwards or change direction unexpectedly as well, so you can't just assume something is moving in a straight line away from you so you can ignore it and focus on another attack. Part of the issue with the above one, is this is a combination of both a space shooter and a bullet hell, as those are two separate genres which look very similar but which behave very differently. A bullet hell has tons of projectiles laid out in complex grid patterns that you're s…

Absolutely brilliant game! I discovered this awhile back from the console release, but decided to buy it again on Steam to leave this review. A fiendishly addictive mix of roguelike survival and shmup gameplay. I will say it doesn't seem to like my HDR monitor and appears kind of weirdly washed out and then requires me to reset the HDR settings when I exit the game. But whatever--this game is fantastic. Get it!

8-bit side scroller bullet hell, pretty good and hard too!

If you plan on using keyboard to play, buy this game! However, i am using an xbox controller and it does not work correctly. It can't navigate menus. It can't switch weapon or item during gameplay. It can't pause the game. It CAN move the ship around, shoot, use bombs and use items. I've looked through the community threads and found several posts with the same issues. They were even replied to by the creator, saying they would try to fix it but that was 2 years ago and i have the same issues now that they had then. If there is a fix for this I will obviously change my review, i've tried all the suggestions from the community threads but no luck.

I highly recommend Operation STEEL to anyone who likes side scrolling shooters. Not only does this game have an awesome hand drawn art style, it has tight controls, varied power ups, unique themed stages / bosses and a great soundtrack.