Omniblast Reviews

This game is an absolute steal. It's clear that a lot of thought went into this. At first glance, this game seems like your standard, run-of-the-mill runner - dodge randomly generated obstacles and get the highest score that you can. Controls are simple: A and D to move, Q and E to strafe/blink, Left Shift to boost. I found it easier to use a controller, although Q wasn't automatically mapped for mine - I've published a controller configuration that works like a charm that you can use. You've got shields, which are replenished by defeating bosses; health, which is replenished by passing asteroids; and charges for both strafe and boost which replenish over time by themselves. You can adjust the difficulty. What ultimately separates this game from other runners are the bosses that will appear randomly during your run. I think the boss mechanic is phenomenal. Defeating a boss is simple enough in theory (dodge the attacks until your boost is charged, then boost to hit, repeat until you hit the boss three times) but the bosses are surprisingly challenging and get more challenging each time you hit them. The boss variety in this game is stunning - each boss has a unique name, appearance, move set, and theme song (the music is phenomenally catchy, btw). The bosses do a fantastic job of breaking up the monotony typical of runners and are definitely the highlight of the game. There's even a dedicated boss-only mode called a boss-run, which has online co-op. For each run you get a score (which can be published to the leaderboard) and omnifrags, which is the only in-game currency and is used to acquire new ships with different stats (strafe distance, shields, health, maneuverability, etc.) The DLC for the game gives you omnifrags per week for a one-time price, but you can honestly make more than the 500 it offers just by playing the game a few times a week, so the DLC is 100% optional - although considering this game is worth way more than $2 to begin with, throwing an extra $5 to the dev isn't the worst thing in the world. Pros: badass music, fun score-seeking gameplay with challenging bosses to keep it interesting, easy-to-earn currency to spend on upgrading your ship, challenging Cons: um, typo in the tutorial? Menus are a little janky, I guess. All in all, the game is $2 and one of the best runners I've played, so pull the trigger.