Don't stop blasting!
Demonstar is certainly a very familiar looking game, and if you've played anything from Xenon 2 to Raptor and Raiden, you'll certainly know what to expect here. It doesn't do anything new for the vertically scrolling shooter genre, but when all you want is to blow stuff up while surrounded by huge explosions and lots of gunfire, then this will certainly scratch that itch. This one does away with any pretension towards storylines and characters and instead simply throws you into the cockpit of a hi-tech jet fighter-type thing and sends you into a series of classic vertical scrolling action. Your only job is to blast everything to smithereens, and this is achieved with the usual array of guns, bombs and powerups, while there's also the expected variety of bad guys and bosses to take your anger out on. In all honesty, there's little else to describe about the game, and if you are in the market for another scrolling shooter, you might want to check this out. However, it's not going to keep you hooked for all that long, for a number of reasons. While pretty much everything is perfectly serviceable, it lacks anything to make it really stand out. It's certainly an easy game to pick up, due to the simple controls, but not to master, thanks to the intensity of the action. The visuals are pretty decent, with some nice enemy and environment design, while the sound effects are solid but add little to the overall experience. All in all, this is very much a standard shooter that should keep any genre fan playing for a while, but which is likely to be discarded in short order.
