Protogalaxy: pseudo-enjoyable

By Jared Vaillancourt [Creative Writing Bureau Chief]

Imagine the sharp shooting of “Fury III”, the puzzle elements of “Chip’s Challenge” and the intellectual obstacles of any generic preschooler’s learning game all mashed together and you’ve got something known as “Protogalaxy”.

The simple controls are sloppy, often freezing up even though the game is too simple to generate any lag. This poses a problem, as if the ship you’re piloting goes off-screen for any length of time, you die and the mission if forfeit. It’s a side-scrolling adventure against enemies whose weapons – even on the hard difficulty level – pose little threat and can easily be overcome. Figuring out the puzzles to win each mission isn’t as much a challenge as a sense of obligation for having wasted the time to start the game up in the first place. Thankfully, there are only twelve levels of this “obligation” to fulfill.

The idea of the game is something like this: you’re the only starfighter pilot that Earth’s got (oh, how original a concept that is) and it’s your duty to fend off the waves of alien invaders who are kind enough to allow you to fly through the superstructures of their capital ships so you can solve the puzzle of how to destroy them. You’re armed with a variety of weapons, each more than capable of handling whatever is thrown at you, and even something called a “gravity grappler” that allows you to grab hold of anything – anything at all – and toss it around like a plaything. Admittedly, it is fun to hurl your enemies into asteroids and vice versa, but when that’s all you need to do to earn impunity, needless to say the novelty wears off faster than the speed of light.

The game also employs as basic upgrade system, so between missions you can spend the money you’ve collected (which is represented by gears and tubes that for some reason are released when asteroids are destroyed) to buy better missiles, lasers, shield batteries and even smaller and more difficult to hit hulls. Since you’re already starting off with a degree of impunity, any upgrade you make simply tips the balance of power even further into your hands, like playing with all aces in a game of poker while your foes are armed with twos and threes.

The game does have one redeeming quality; it is reminiscent of the old-fashioned arcade shooters of the early ‘80s. Some may find this novelty nostalgic, but for those of us used to games that are actually fun, Protogalaxy is not for us.

Safe flying, players… and watch out for black holes.