The Digest: Voodoo Chief creates an enjoyable top down fast paced shooter with a large amount of carnage and a ton of enemies to shoot at.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: May, 10 2009
DEVELOPER: VoodooChief
GENRE: Shooter
Price: 240 Points

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:

An Original Shootemup. Run Pellmell down the training corridors shooting and avoiding the Training Droids. Packed full of features. More than 100 levels. Awards, Highscores, Story, Cooperative play. Lots of Aliens and Unique playfield control. How High can you score and how many levels can you fight your way through?

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Four Player Co-op
• Simple Gameplay
• In Game achievements

Pellmell is one of those arcade games that is a fun break from the in-depth trilogies that are flooding the market these days. You play as a character named Pellmell who is going through a very rigorous and deadly training course. In each of these courses the game will have you jumping, dodging, and shooting your whole way through the 100+ levels in the game. It’s really cool that a game like this has so many levels because it does never seem to end. It really makes it feel like you get the right amount of bang for your buck.

There is a story mode in the game, but that should be taken lightly. It’s not displayed in a cutscene, but with text under the story section. After you read it, you don’t really feel a connection between what you’re playing and the story. There are no recurring characters that appear or cheesy love story. The gameplay boils down to your character running through a narrow hallway shooting, dodging, and jumping over everything that basically isn’t him, until he reaches the goal.  It’s not going to kill the game for you, but don’t feel bad if you don’t read it.

The first thing that caught my attention about the game was the inclusion of in game achievements. This is huge. Since Indie Games don’t give  us points to add to our gamerscore, it definitely pushes the achievement hunters away. This addition makes that game stand up above the rest because you now have these mini objectives in the game that hold your attention throughout your play time. It’s a great addition that a lot of indie games need to do this.

The game also has it’s share of items to pick up as well. Extra bullet damage, the ability to shoot backwards,  more ammo, and health packs that they call “oxygen.” The pick ups are not broken but when using the shield, it would have been better to still make the character jump over gaps and walls rather then walk through them like they’re not there. It’s a minor complaint, but can have you sprinting through through a good portion of  the level especially if you pick up back to back shields.

There is another problem with the game, which is much more severe. On level 27 a new group of enemies are encountered and they hop around like crickets. They have a hard time hitting Pellmell already and basically pose no threat. If you put the controller down on the ground and just let the character go, you will complete the level with virtually no damage. This started to happen a lot from that point on. You could just leave the controller alone and only need to pick it up to run into the goal. It almost seemed like the enemies don’t really know how to react to a stationary player and the game is relying on human error to cause you to fail. This is of course most affective with levels that are absent of walls and pits.

The multiplayer portion of this game is the biggest draw. You can gather 3 other friends to play in this frantic shooter. It does make the game significantly more fun to play with other people, but it can get a bit confusing. With so much going on screen especially in the later levels, you can’t tell what’s hitting you at times.  The shield can also be use strategically by hiding behind the person who has it. It wont prevent players from falling into pits, but will stop them from taking any oncoming damage.

Conclusion: This game is one of those diamond in the roughs. It has everything you want in an indie game and then some. Multiplayer is some good solid fun, there’s a bunch of enemies to shoot at, and in game achievements all compile into a pretty decent game.

Single Player: 3/5 | Multi-Player: 3/5