Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony Review

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony caught my eye when I saw the trailer on Steam; looking at its classic 16-bit pixel art style and SHMUP (Shoot 'Em Up) bullet hell gameplay, I had a gut feeling that this title would be bloody good fun.

After picking the game up and playing for a good number of solid hours, I can happily report that I wasn't disappointed.

So Jamestown has taken somewhat of a creative license with their neo-classical story. It's the 17th Century and Mars is under the ruling of British Colonials; the Spaniards have sought an alliance with the Martians and you are what stands in their way.

As you would expect from a bullet hell style game, the action is fast paced and frantic, which is what gives the game most of its appeal. There is little room for manoeuvre, along with a small margin of error between your ship surviving or being blasted into oblivion. In addition, the game has local co-op for up-to four players on the same system, unfortunately there is no LAN or Internet multi-player but for an indie title it's forgivable.

How do you get four players on the same PC? Well if you're lucky enough to have four wired pads available then it's no problem, otherwise you can have someone use the mouse, someone else on the keyboard while a couple of friends bring their gaming pads with them. Out of the three available control methods I highly recommend using a gamepad for this title.

The unique aspect of the co-op gameplay is that you essentially have unlimited lives as long as at least one player survives as there is a respawn timer that ticks down on your fallen compatriots. Also there is a chance for a revive pick-up to drop from one of the vast number of enemies you will encounter each level. On the first two difficulty levels, of which there are five in total, the revive pick-up will instantly respawn whoever is waiting to rejoin the battle. From Legendary difficulty then it will only respawn one player per pick-up, so some deft flying skill is needed at times to collect these precious life savers.

This mechanic delivers a much more fluid gaming experience, along with making the bullet hell game a little more forgiving to newcomers to the genre. The way the developers have set out the actual difficulty levels also eases players into the nightmare of this genre and extending the lifespan of the title to boot. To start out on normal will only let you play the first three levels of this game, and in all honesty this should pose little challenge to even the most casual of gamers.

Once complete you are then told that level four is only available on Difficult or above, as I mentioned earlier there are five levels of difficulty in total, Normal, Difficult, Legendary, Divine and Judgement. Each of which is more intense than the last. If you somehow feel that this is too easy then you can unlock a Hardcore mode with the games own currency, Ducats.

These Ducats are awarded at the end of each level and allow you to purchase unlocks such as the Gauntlet mode, which gives you two continues only to complete the entire game in one sitting, additional ships to use and challenge packs.

The challenge packs also reward you with Ducats if successfully completed and range from achieving a certain score in a certain time limit or to just simply survive which is easier said than done.

Moving to the actual gameplay, it delivers a fresh and enjoyable experience away from the endless monotony of regurgitated Call of Duty titles and wannabe clones set in war torn Generistan.

Every location has such an attention to detail that it's fantastic, from the British Colonials running for their lives from the Martian aggressors, to the actual enemies you encounter. They are all fantastic to look at and have quite a variety to them; the developers seem to have avoided the age old pit fall of just making a generic drone, have a couple of colour variations then simply copy/paste into the game a few hundred times.

Once slain, enemies drop golden nuts and bolts - collect these and they build up your Vaunt meter, this meter will allow you to deploy a temporary shield around you and start off a point multiplier; the shield will destroy all the bullets that collide with it and gain you additional points. Keep the meter topped off with golden goodies and you will increase the length of your point combo, you can either let this meter duration expire naturally or press your Vaunt button a second time for an even shorter shield which kills your combo but can prove to be an effective "oh sh*t" button when your screen is just a sea of death.

Now the six levels in campaign mode may not sound like a great deal, but the way you have to go through each difficulty in order to get to that next level does help in extending the game's length - also don't think you can finish this easily as believe me, the harder difficulty levels are bloody insane.

Add in the Hardcore mode, 20+ bonus levels, Gauntlet mode and the four player local co-op and you have in your hands one f*cking awesome game. It is all designed to keep you coming back for more and more which it does quite admirably, the leader-boards and Steam achievements attract the board warriors and completionists, throw in a cheap price point to boot, £6.99/$9.99/9.99€, and it's criminal NOT to buy this game.