Tap the fire button in this vertical shooter, and you’ll hear a familiar sound – the distinct click of a firearm with an empty ammo clip. That’s because every shot fired in Retaliate must be absorbed by activating a shield first. This fills a gauge not just with bullets, but also later missiles and mines too. Then, when formations of enemies appear, volleys of fire can be returned. Retaliate isn’t so-called just because it sounds cool – it’s also the core mechanic.
There’s a very slight learning curve here. It takes a while to accustom to the shield’s duration – around five seconds – and chances are you’ll begin counting bullets too, absorbing and returning the same amount while making every shot count. The pace is slow enough to allow for precise aiming, with the screen scrolling slowly before pausing to focus on large enemy clusters. Often, there will be a single rapid-firing enemy on screen, meaning you’ll need to keep them alive and use them as a bullet source to destroy everything else nearby.
That’s the theory, at least. See, Retaliate doesn’t really punish for sloppy shooting skills outside of dropping the multiplier. It’s possible to go through long proportions of a stage simply by activating the shield and garnering a colossal bullet stockpile; there’s no limit despite the gauge indicator maxing quickly. Another thing that prevents this from falling into the realms of ‘hardcore’ is that while the shield is activated it’s possible to simply smash into enemies as they descend the screen. Whole formations, in fact. There isn’t much motivation and encouragement outside of boss battles to, y’ know, retaliate.
The Story Mode is the ‘meat’ of the package. There are six levels to play through, each ending with a boss battle against a large metallic ship with a digitised face. Their facial expressions are linked to their attack patterns, which is a nice touch, helping with avoidance. Ten lives are granted, and no continues. While this may not sound too bad, that stockpile is meant to last from start to finish – and the six stages here are remarkably long. This makes the Story Mode an incredibly challenging affair, to the point where it’s almost unfairly so. I was very surprised to find that it doesn’t give the ability to continue a stage. Select retry here, and you’re placed right back at square one. During a tricky moment on stage two, I lost three lives in quick succession, greatly reducing my chances of success going forward.
But there is still some entertainment to be had. There’s an Arcade Mode too, presenting several challenges based around each of the Story Mode stages, now with infinite lives. The focus is instead on shooting down as many enemies as possible, with a handy percentage gauge to show your progress from one attempt to the next. As all the challenges are unlocked from the outset, it’s possible to jump straight into missions that grant later weapons, such as a searing laser that’ll churn through several enemies at once. Deploying mines also takes skill, requiring you to timely place them in an enemy’s path as they descend.
It’s presented using sharp visuals placed upon a crisp starfield backdrop, and there’s a choice of craft (only varying cosmetically) with a range of colour schemes. The music meanwhile is quite mellow. Not what was expected, but it fits quite well with the slower pace.
In a way, Retaliate is more in line with retro shooters of yore – such as Space Invaders and Galaga – in that you can’t fire relentlessly and must make shots count. Often, you may only have a couple of bullets at your disposal. It’s a novel approach to the genre – and something the developer has tried to improve upon, with a distant predecessor for the Roku(!) also available – but it doesn’t work too well, and the punishing difficulty of the Story Mode makes it far too tempting to rely on smashing into enemies while shielded instead of returning fire. You might be able to get an hour or two of enjoyment out of the Arcade Mode after retreating from the Story Mode, but anything more than that seems like a bit of a stretch.
Romans I XVI Gaming’s Retaliate is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.