A Shooter with a Strategic Twist
Top-down shooters are pretty much ten-a-penny these days, and so for a game to create a bit of elbow room, a bit of clear blue water between itself and the rest, it needs to have something a little bit different about it. This leads me neatly on to Sky of Destruction from Satur Entertainment and Sometimes You, which has just such a difference.
What would happen if someone was to mix a top-down, sci-fi shooter and a twin-stick shooter? Well, Sky of Destruction is what would happen! So, can this one tweak be enough to make Sky of Destruction stand out in a crowded marketplace, or is it just another also ran? Well, let’s blast off and check it out, shall we?
Minimalist Action and Absent Narratives
Now, most shooters these days don’t seem to bother with a story, and here this game is very much following the crowd. I have literally no idea why we are where we are, and why we have to attack and destroy the enemy: just that there is an enemy, we have a fleet of aircraft, and the two things, when placed in close proximity, means that we need to have a fight.
We’ll move onto the presentation of the game next, and at least here there is something to say. Sky of Destruction works as a top down shooter, and this is basically true, but the viewing angle is slightly offset to create a 3D type effect. There are a variety of areas to fight in, but they all are much of a muchness, with rocky ground and occasional mountains to fly around. The enemy aircraft are exactly the same as ours, but a slightly different colour, with any foes being red in colour.
Isometric Action and Eye-Catching Explosions
Everything moves at a very good pace, and the graphics, while basically simple, do work well. Worthy of special mention are the explosions, as they are certainly eye-catching, especially when it is a big building or craft that goes up in flames.
Sound is pretty much as you’d expect, with lots of “pew-pew” effects and rumbling of explosions. The rest of the game is oddly silent, with no sound from the aircraft, and minimal voice work to be heard. Music is at a premium, with very little to be heard, and what there is is completely forgettable. All in all, the presentation is somewhat basic, but works well enough.
An Awful Introduction to Combat
So, we dock with the carrier of gameplay, and here the news is slightly better. The first thing I want to say is that the tutorial found in Sky of Destruction is absolutely awful, choosing my words carefully. There are guidelines to certain bits of the game, and being kind, I’ll guess they were written by a non-native English speaker, as they are largely a collection of words with no underlying sense. The rest of the tutorial is absolutely absent: it was the second mission before I found out that my aircraft could actually shoot, as the game didn’t tell me how to do it! The guns of the craft you choose are fired with the right stick, in a twin stick stylee, in case you are wondering.
The Inventory Puzzle
With that off my chest, let’s have a look at the rest of the gameplay, and here the news is a bit better. We have a carrier, as well as a fleet of three different aircraft to choose from, all as we look to take the fight to the enemy. Unlocking new aircraft is an interesting procedure too. See, as enemy craft are destroyed, we get a fragment of a blueprint, left to try and fill the outline of the aircraft we want to unlock with these blueprint chunks. Each craft has a different layout of boxes within its airframe, and once they are unlocked, you can also add different upgrade modules into them.
Obviously, if you can’t fit the module into the craft, it can’t be equipped, and so this keeps you on your toes. Think of the inventory system in Resident Evil 4 and you won’;t be a million miles away.
So, once you have chosen your aircraft, equipped them with the latest and greatest weapons (including consumable weapons that can be built in the menu screen), they can be fitted to the aircraft, working in addition to their built-in weaponry.
And it is here where I must mention the game economy at this point, as the amount of money that Sky of Destruction throws at you is crazy. As an example, I have 1500 torpedoes manufactured in my hanger, and this means that I can fire them with gay abandon, with no fear of running out. This same money can also be used to upgrade the carrier, and by the fifth level, I had upgraded it to the maximum, and got the achievement for it. This makes the rest of the game a bit easier, as you can imagine.
Strategic Strategy
Anyways, gameplay. The usual score is that we select a node on a hexagonal map, then we are given an objective to achieve, all before launching the mission. There seems to be two ways to complete a mission too, either by doing what the game asks you to do, such as to destroy enemy buildings, or by destroying all of the enemy aircraft in their fleet. There is a helpful counter that shows you not only how many aircraft you have in reserve, but also how many the enemy have. Basically, select which aircraft you want to launch from the carrier, and then give out fleet commands. In terms of the latter, it’s possible to get them to attack a specific point, fly around the carrier and defend it, or to hunt down enemy aircraft.
The aircraft we directly control can be any one of the three types that can be taken on the mission, and so picking the right aircraft is pretty vital. I tend to leave my fleet defending the carrier, as if that succumbs, it is game over. And then rinse and repeat from one end of the mission select screen to the other!
A Unique Shooter Sunk by its Tutorial
All in all, Sky of Destruction is sufficiently different from a run of the mill shooter to make it interesting. The composition of your fleet, and the way that you can configure the aircraft you use, add a bit of spice to a stale genre. On the downside, the tutorial is extremely poor and doesn’t really give us much of a clue as to what to do.
But all in all, the game is fun to play. And at the end of the day, that’s all we can really ask, isn’t it?
Important Links
Sky of Destruction Blasts onto Xbox, PlayStation, Switch – https://www.thexboxhub.com/sky-of-destruction-blasts-onto-xbox-playstation-switch/
Buy an Xbox Series X|S Optimised edition – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sky-of-destruction-xbox-series-x-s/9pjk2nhj874r
Or an Xbox One version – https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/p/sky-of-destruction/9pnkb8cbh1p3
