Varia Metal
Varia Metal
Varia Metal is a vertical, 2-player simultaneous shmup. You control one of two characters, Grey (p1) or Atuja (p2). Each ship has two weapons, a charge shot, and options/bombs (more on this in a bit). By pressing the Form Change button, the ship morphs into its alternate form, which lets it use the other weapon. Each form has a different charge shot, and the options/bombs behave differently. Every so often, a helper ship will approach from the rear, carrying an orb. Shoot the helper to make it drop the orb, which will upgrade your ship, or give you an option if you’re at full power.
Which brings us to the first of the game’s flaws: Using a bomb consumes an option. While you don’t always lose your options if you die, if you use them up, you won’t have any bombs until you fully power up your ship. It takes 5 orbs to fully upgrade. Now, you do drop orbs when you die, so you can power back up really fast – but you’ll never drop more than 5 of them. So using bombs at full power and then dying means you’re out of bombs.
Secondly, the two character’s ships have completely different weapons, and they’re pretty unbalanced. Changing forms takes about a second, and you’re unable to shoot while doing so. Also, to charge a weapon, you have to stop firing entirely for about 5 seconds – the charge attack is ONLY active when the gauge is 100% full.
Grey’s first form has a spread shot, with a laser charge beam. The option in this form doesn’t shoot, it just follows the ship and creates a spike. His second form is a “splitter cannon” – it breaks up when hitting enemies. The charge for this form is a circle of orbs that spiral out from his ship, and then home in if at max power. The option in this form orbits him, and shoots in the opposite direction of movement.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.Atuja’s first form is also a spread shot, but it doesn’t shoot straight in front of her ship, but rather goes in a W shape – back and out, then up. The charge shot in this form is a laser beam that goes different directions based on how upgraded she is, and is fairly useless. Her options sit directly in front of her, and shoot opposite of movement. This weapon combo is very powerful – it can take out a large enemy in seconds. Her second form shoots missiles forwards and backwards, and the charge is just more of them. The option stays behind her, and creates a spike. Basically worthless. Options don’t block shots, as well.
Another glaring flaw is that you can’t shoot things at the top of the screen until they’re below the score section. You can see this in the video. Other issues include the fact that the sounds in this game are very annoying, with very sharp noises for bullet fire, the explosions sound out of place, the music is unremarkable, heavy re-use of enemies, enemy design is fairly uninspired – planes, tanks, with the occasional out-of-place sci-fi turret.
