A Minimalist Run-And-Gunner, And Not In A Good Way
It’s been a minute since we’ve had a killer run-and-gunner on the Xbox. Metal Slug has only surfaced for a Tactics game, Megaman 11 is still a way off, and I’m still resentful about Contra Rogue Corps. Which gives the floor to S. Prysm Destroyer: what can it do with it?
It’s clear early on that S. Prysm Destroyer isn’t heading in quite the same direction as the games we mentioned. While it is definitely a run-and-gunner in how it plays, there are no bosses or cinematic moments. There are no characters to choose from, nor modes. There’s no story or a sense of a progressing mission. There’s barely a sense of progression at all, in fact. Once you complete the fourth level, you’re looping back to the first one, just with red, more-challenging variants of the enemies. There isn’t even a roguelike structure tacked on.
S. Prysm Destroyer is stripped back far enough that it can best be described as a score-attack arcade game. The motivation to replay comes from beating your own score or those of friends and randos on the internet. If your kicks come from discovering something new, whether that’s new powers, levels or enemies, then this is barren. There’s not even co-op play to enliven things.
A Prysm Sentence
That minimalism is a huge ask for any fans of the genre. It would certainly be more palatable if there was variety in the four levels. We counted seven enemies in total, and that’s being charitable by including ‘flame turret’ and ‘electric floor’. They do different things – the gorilla pauses the action to piledrive you if you get too close, while a squid puffs into ink on death – but they can roughly be grouped into long-range and close-range killers. In our case, this wasn’t enough to spice up the gameplay.
All that could save S. Prysm Destroyer was tip-top quality. But that’s in short supply. The enemies are all psychic, firing well before they appear on screen, which leads to deaths that are no fault of the player. When you get ambushed by a flame turret, you can emerge with half your health missing, which is a problem when health is persistent across levels. Inexplicably, those same flame turrets are also the game’s biggest bullet sponge. They are the least interesting enemy to fight, yet we spent the longest time fighting them.
Accentuating The Positive
It’s only fair to mention a few things that S. Prysm Destroyer gets right, even if they are less central to the game. Power-ups aren’t skimped on, and S. Prysm Destroyer is generous about how many you can carry at once. We haven’t actually reached the upper-limit of these, which meant that we could be ridiculously overpowered and the game didn’t care much. There’s a glee to obliterating everything on the game screen, although those moments are short-lived.
Mega-power-ups do much the same. There’s one of these at the end of each level (two on any level that is a multiple of four), and they give you control of a flame katana, ice-thrower or electric drone. The first two, at the very least, are appropriately OTT. You’re basically windscreen-wiping the enemies off your screen with each press of the A button. The electric drone is a bit meh in comparison, zapping enemies that come close but invariably not killing them. Still, for the ten seconds that you have them, you’re a striding adonis across the battlefield.
And credit to S. Prysm Destroyer, it does have its own sense of style. The rough, grainy polygons make it look like a PlayStation One launch title. I’m kind of on board with it, even if there is some egregious slow-down that makes it look more Amiga than PS1 on occasion. The enemies are a bonkers grab-bag of dinosaurs, gorillas and wasp-women who lodge into the ground, bums wiggling in the air if they miss you. There’s no consistent theme, unless you consider ‘things a 14-year old finds cool’ a theme. But it’s got some charm.
Let’s Not Get Carried Away…
But while we’ve pushed up a few commendable aspects of S. Prysm Destroyer, our overall sentiment towards it is negative. That’s mostly down to its threadbare nature. Honestly, if we pulled together all the enemies, backdrops and power-ups, I don’t think there would be enough to fill a single Metal Slug level, let alone a competitor title. And there’s certainly not as much spectacle or joy within the carnage as any of its peers.
Which means S. Prysm Destroyer only has a sheepish answer to the question of ‘why should run-and-gunner fans play this game?’. It’s got some quirky PS1 graphics and wasp-woman butts. That wasn’t enough for us, and it’s probably not for you, either. We like a little more substance to our shooters, even at a budget price.
Important Links
Mecha Anime Meets Run ‘n Gun! S. Prysm Destroyer Blasts Onto Xbox, PlayStation and Switch – https://www.thexboxhub.com/mecha-anime-meets-run-n-gun-s-prysm-destroyer-blasts-onto-xbox-playstation-and-switch/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/s-prysm-destroyer/9PDXN02TWXHS
