Eco Shooter: Plant 530 review

Yes, this really is rubbish. An on-rails shooter where you’ll spend whole minutes (if you have the stomach for it) shooting at tin cans. Three levels’ worth of tin cans are waiting to be shot, either sitting there passively, advancing towards you, flapping their sharp can-top wings or, in a worst-case, can-based scenario, piling up to create hardened, can-flinging boss cans.

Yup, Eco Shooter is all about the can. It’s also, in the game’s single redeeming feature, all about the recycling of said cans. Rather cleverly, the core mechanic has you hoovering up energy from dead cans to replenish your solitary weapon, the ammo stock of which also serves as your health bar. Shoot too much without recycling your targets and you’ll be out of ammo, out of life and, well… dead.

 

It’s a neat little design, but that’s all it is – and the execution is woeful. Three greeny-brown levels and then a ‘Challenge’ level that sees you playing all three greeny-brown levels in a row. A little more colour would have been nice. A game that didn’t last just half an hour would have been nice. A half-decent challenge would have been nice. Some enemies that weren’t can-based would have been even nicer.

Apr 14, 2010