Novastorm

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Earth is destroyed so humans had to keep some valuable -and vital- resources (seeds, plants, animals) inside ark-like armored containers. Everything is controlled through an array of high technology systems leaving any human interference minimal. It seems that the sophisticated machines have their own artificial intelligence and, going wild, they "decide" to attack and vanish the humans remained. You, as a skilled pilot and member of the Scavenger 4 Unit, must fly your fully armed (and armored) spacecraft (available from a wide variety of types) and battle against the enemy forces, preventing them from destroying any valuable resources. The game is played from a behind-the-aircraft perspective and the controls are quite responsive, although its high level of difficulty that needs some time to practice maneuvering

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game's visuals are great, with digitized backgrounds covered by a good mix of dark colors. Novastorm features fast action with multiple angle changes and rotations on screen and many foes flying simultaneously around, plus many deadly obstacles like mountains, bridges and more. The only disadvantage is that when things get too crowded there are slowdowns here and there. This enjoyable shooting action is accompanied by a cool selection of CD-audio tracks along with a variety of sampled sound effects, though I would prefer the use of better samples for the spacecraft's cannons. Novastorm is surely challenging but it still is one of the most impressive spacecraft shooting games ever developed for the 32bit generation of gaming machines.