If you’re finding yourself in the scary world of the 21st century, with fancy new consoles and ever improving visuals and complex gameplay mechanics, and you’re yearning for a return to an 80’s gaming arcade where life was much simpler, then you could do a lot worse than picking up Spectra - an 8 bit racer from Gateway Interactive.
It’s clear from booting up the game, the old school inspiration is strong, with the start screen asking you to ‘insert credit’ by pressing the A button. This takes you a stripped back menu screen, and the oh so simplistic twitch racing game. The simple objective – survive the level until the music stops sounds easier in theory that in practice, but the easy controls of moving your ship left and right as the tracks and obstacles comes toward you allows for an addictive experience, and one that cries out for you to have ‘just one more go’.
While you are heading through the fast paced levels, you are constantly looking at racking up your score while trying to stay on the track. You collect yellow bricks at 10 points each, the score keeps adding up until there is a gap in collections and it gets added to your score. If you collide with a blockade before that point you lose the point tally. There are options for more points by getting ‘air time’, and picking up multipliers laid down on the tracks – these also speed up your game meaning your reactions need to be quicker. There is also room for scoring points off the blockades if you skim alongside them, another risk because a millimetre too far will see your points take a hit. There is nothing more tragic than having a solid 30 second score streak in the thousands, then mistiming a turn and losing it all. But as previously mentioned, such is the nature of the game, you think you can do it next time, and go back on more time – over and over.
The game’s visuals are bright and clean. Purple and orange neon are the theme of the entire experience, and, while it definitely works, I think there was scope here to change things up for each level. Different colour schemes for different levels would have kept the look of the game feeling a bit more fresh, rather than relying on different music for each on. The music by the way, adds to the games fast paced feel, and would likely feel at home on a Zion dancefloor (a little reference for all you Matrix geeks out there). Another negative is the lack of online leaderboards. This is a solo only experience, where you are trying to best your own scores, and an online leaderboard would allow you to compete with friends, which would strengthen the games replayability factor.
Spectra is a fun little game that has surprised me. I was quickly entranced by its charm and filled my house with 8 bit techno music for hours. And I’ll happily go back for more aswell. There is plenty that could make this game better, but for just shy of 6 quid, it has a lot going for it. If you’re itching to go back to a day of challenging, but simpler gaming, then check this out.
**Thank you to the Xbox Community Network for the opportunity to review this game**