Galaxy Kingdoms comes about via the teams at Coliseum Studios and Afil Games. And while normally I would have some kind of witty anecdote to share with you about the game, this time I’ve come up dry.
It means I’ll be sticking with the facts, and Galaxy Kingdoms is a game about exploring planets, meeting strange new races, and shooting them in the face. In return for money, no less!
But is this a game that demands to be played, grabbing you by the throat and refusing to let go? Or is it a game you’ll play for five minutes before forgetting as you find something a bit more shiny? Well, all I’ll say at this point is that it is most definitely one of those two options…
Looking at the presentation side of the game first, the best thing I can say about the graphics found in Galaxy Kingdoms is that they are retro styled. The sprites are blocky and almost completely devoid of any personality, whilst the worlds present are dull and full of parts that look like you should be able to walk on them, but instead act like fences. Honestly, I think this game looks worse than I remember games looking back in the day.
The camera is smooth though, which is a plus point, and it is easy to see what is going on, except for when enemies somehow manage to shoot you from off the screen before you can see them. That’s not quite as pleasant.
Sound is also pretty basic, with the majority of the sound effects being gunshots, complemented by some drum and bass styled tunes, which jars massively with the action on screen. The cutscenes that the story is presented in are basic text boxes, and it looks like the dialogue has been run through Google translate before being shoehorned into the game; the syntax and flow of the conversations feels stilted and a bit strange. All in all, the presentation of Galaxy Kingdoms is pretty ropy.
Can the story make things any better? Well, not really is the answer. We are Magnus, a bounty hunter, and along with our tiny robot sidekick Kyra, we are sent by a Guild to go to the outer reaches of the galaxy and shoot various creatures for money. Our goal is to become the greatest bounty hunter in the cosmos, and hopefully we can guide Magnus towards his goal. Not much of a story, right? Perhaps not, but at least we have an idea what we are meant to do…
So, the final hope for Galaxy Kingdoms to scrape a good mark is to be left to the gameplay. It runs as a twin stick shooter, with the traditional controls in place; the left stick moves Magnus around, while the right stick controls where he aims his weapon. Add in a button to shoot, one to dash and one to use a jetpack (which doesn’t allow Magnus to gain any height, but does allow him to cross rivers or holes in the ground) and you’re pretty much sorted.
The problem is, the actual gunplay is disappointing straight from the off. We start with a weedy pistol that fires really, really slowly (no, slower than that!) and takes about a week and a half to reload. When there are loads of enemies coming at us, trying to get a shot off is the hardest part of the entire game. It’s with excitement then that a shotgun soon pops up, however it is somehow even worse. Although the gun is more powerful, it only holds four shots before needing reloading, and the time between shots has increased as well. I would tell you about a machine gun, that I bought with my bounty from killing the first boss, but sadly as I had two guns in my inventory already, it was sent to the spaceship, and when I tried to equip it it disappeared. Honestly, I’ve never played a game where shooting enemies had been made boring before, but now I can say that I have.
Shooting generic enemies, trying to save civilians, then finding out where the big bad of the level, our target, lives is the usual pattern of what happens as we drop onto a new planet. As you can imagine, this gets tedious, and while new weapons can be bought for in-game cash, along with new armour parts, there is never a real drive to improve.
I won’t lie, during my time with Galaxy Kingdoms I’ve been more than happy to just see my little guy die, if only so I could finish playing. Â
Galaxy Kingdoms does the unthinkable and turns a twin stick shooter, one of the very finest of genres, into a dull gaming experience. The main problem is found in the speed of the gunplay; it is so slow, and it seemingly takes longer to reload a magazine than it does to empty it, that it totally kills any flow or urgency.Â
There are far better games in this genre, and you’d be better off playing any of them rather than Galaxy Kingdoms.
Galaxy Kingdoms: A Pixelated Bounty Hunter Adventure Blasts Off on Consoles and PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/galaxy-kingdoms-a-pixelated-bounty-hunter-adventure-blasts-off-on-consoles-and-pc/
Buy Galaxy Kingdoms on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/galaxy-kingdoms/9nmgg3sv2g35
