Dull Space Invaders clone
Space Invaders was the space shoot 'em up which really captured gamers' attention all over the world and which has proved enduringly popular for decades now, entering video gaming's hall of fame. Numerous vertical shooters popped up in its wake, from Galaxian to Xenon and ripoff/clones like Cheesy Invaders. Xtron is a pretty basic copy of the original classic but adds little to the formula and unfortunately comes across as pretty tedious and dull. The gameplay is exactly as you remember it, and simply consists of a series of static screens which are filled with vicious alien spaceships all out to destroy you. You control your little ship at the bottom of the screen and must simply blast them all to smithereens before they get you. There's nothing in the way of powerups or weapons to keep things interesting and it really is simply a case of moving left and right and hammering down on the firing button in order to rack up as many points as possible before you run out of lives. The game starts out pretty easy and although the speed and number of enemies soon pick up, the challenge doesn't really increase that much and it's not that difficult to cruise through a number of levels without losing many lives. This is partially due to the fact that the game is quite generous at giving out extra ones as you reach certain points amounts. The visuals here are pretty basic and although there's a bit of variety in the enemy design, the fact that this appeared more than ten years after Space Invaders but doesn't seem to have advance things much, is pretty disappointing. Really, this is only worth playing if you're a diehard shooter fan but even then, there are much better examples to try.
