Developed by Crying Monkey Studio
Released for Xbox Live Indie Games (3/2010)
Zulu Hour attempts to be a shoot-em-up in the old-school vein, but misses the mark by a bit. The game makes a good first impression, with a nice text intro and cool illustrations for the title and loading screens. Even the in-game visuals aren't too bad, featuring some decent 3D-rendered graphics. Your ship is viewed from a top-down perspective and the screen scrolls vertically as you shoot mechanical squid. There's a campaign mode and an arcade mode to choose from. Campaign mode has some story screens between stages and your ship starts out a lot weaker, acquiring upgrades along the way, while arcade mode throws you right into the action.
The problem with this game is that the gameplay just isn't very engaging and this is coming from a huge fan of the shmup genre. In arcade mode, enemies die far too easily, spray bullets too slow and pretty much every enemy you shoot drops a power-up of some sort. It's easy to the point of absolute boredom. I couldn't really get into campaign mode either, mostly due to the slow pacing of the action. There are too few enemies to shoot at and just not enough variety in them to keep things interesting. I will admit I didn't play too far into this game as it simply just felt uninspired. I honestly don't see the game evolving into something much better than its initial stage had to offer. It does appear to try some behind-the-ship perspective segments which I'm assuming is going to attempt to play like Starfox or Afterburner. Even if these segments were cool they still wouldn't make up for the lackluster vertical-scroller segments.
Final Verdict: At $2.99, which is roughly $2 more than your average indie game, I can't recommend Zulu Hour. Even the most hardcore shmup fans can skip this one.
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