Avoid Barrages Of Bullets In rRootage Online HD
Ken Cho’s legendary has been ported over to your iDevice for portable bullet hell enjoyment. That’s exactly what you will get in rRootage Online HD ($0.99) by fraglab.at.
For those that aren’t familiar with the bullet hell “shmup” (shoot-em-up) games, it basically involves you controlling a ship, where you must avoid all incoming bullets from enemies. It’s actually harder than it sounds, because in these games, the screen is literally filled with bullets.
This is actually the first time I have heard about rRootage. For those that aren't familiar with this title, it basically puts the player in control of a ship that must fight against a series of abstract boss battles. In fact, there are no other ships or small enemies to fight -- you just fight these boss enemies, which have barrages of projectiles that you must avoid.
Unlike other shmup games, rRootage Online HD does not have your ship auto-fire. However, the controls are simple. You can fire by touching the screen, so you’ll be shooting and moving your ship at the same time. It seems that your ship will only fire a fat laser, and this laser does more damage to the boss when you are closer to it. Using a second touch while shooting will activate your special.
There are four game modes in rRootage Online HD: Normal, PSY, IKA, and GW. Each one is inspired by a different game (Psyvariar, Ikaruga, and Giga Wing) has a different special attack.
Normal is what you’d expect – you get bombs that wipes out enemy bullets. The number of bombs that you have remaining will be shown at the bottom.
PSY mode has a graze meter at the bottom that will increase whenever your ship grazes a bullet. Once the meter is full, your ship is invincible for a brief amount of time. The special is Rolling, which widens the range for your ship to graze.
IKA mode gives your ship two attributes – White and Black. The bullets that the enemy spits out at you will also have these attributes, so you can absorb bullets that match. These absorbed bullets will turn into lasers automatically, adding more damage to the boss. The Special is Attribution Change, which will, obviously, change your ships attribute so you can absorb the other type of bullets.
The GW mode gives you access to a reflector that will reflect bullets that surround your ship. You can use this until the reflector meter, displayed at the bottom, becomes empty. This has to be used sparingly, since it’s not infinite.
There is GameCenter and OpenFeint integration for leaderboards and achievements, so there’s always replay value.
I found rRootage Online HD to be extremely challenging, and a nice shmup to add to my collection. The graphics aren’t the most impressive, in my opinion, but good games don’t depend on graphics, right? The action is still very fast-paced, just like what you’d expect from other great shmups like Dodonpachi Resurrection, ESPGALUDA II, and Deathsmiles.
There are two different versions of rRootage Online: the iPhone only version is free, and then the HD (universal) version is only $0.99. If you only have an iPhone, then go grab the free version (it’s the full game). If you have both an iPad and an iPhone, you may want to check out the HD version, or just get the iPhone version and scale it up on an iPad. Either way, the game is a lot of fun and worth checking out.
