Procyon Review

With the traditional side-scrolling shoot-em-up being one of the casualties of mainstream gaming’s headfirst dive onto the rocky cliffs of 3D shoot-em-up-for-a-bit-then-hide-behind-a-rock-or-something-em-up, they’ve had somewhat of a re-emergence in the hardcore and indie scenes as “bullet hell shooters”. For the uninitiated, a bullet hell shooter is like a Gradius style shoot-em-up but reimagined by nerds who got left out of proceedings on New Year’s Eve, stared up at the fireworks with tears in their eyes and imagined a spaceship flying in between the explosions. “Radical!” they thought to themselves, and radical it was as a whole new trend of games where players dodge thousands of pieces of rainbow confetti was born.

That leads us on to Procyon then, which really doesn’t need much further explanation for you to understand it. You’re a spaceship; you move to the right and shoot stuff, a whole bunch of other spaceships move to the left and shoot multi-coloured sick at you, get to the end and fight a boss to win. Job done. The game does also half-heartedly attempt to have a story but the cutscenes pretty much reaffirm the whole “just shoot stuff and don’t worry about the details” logic that these games usually thrive on.

Procyon does have a focus on replayability and scoring, which is a really polite way of saying “there’s like 20 minutes of gameplay” but it balances that out by being really cheap so let’s not be too harsh on it. There’s a score multiplier system in place that encourages you to take out enemies and keep your combos high, making running away from danger a last resort tactic. Although there are only five reasonably short levels, there’s a whole host of difficulty settings and extra challenge modes for the true hardcore gamer that this sort of thing appeals to in the first place to really sink their teeth into.

There’s nothing wrong with the game only having five levels, but it’s a shame that these levels don’t have more of a personality to them (like for example, The Flying Hamster). Every stage is a looping 3D rendered background and a choreographed assortment of enemies and any hope of variety gets thrown to the wind. The third level is kind of cool and has this thing going on where the action is taking place between an enemy spaceship armada but other than that it’s just basic enemies on a looping background.

It’s time to talk about the actual shooting, where there’s actually a lot to discuss. Unlike many of its retro predecessors, Procyon has no upgrade or ammo pickup mechanic and your spaceship has the same abilities at all times. Instead, you get a basic shot, a continuous beam, a special super shot that needs to be earned first and a rechargeable shield. Holding down the button for the shield whilst shooting with the other buttons changes the attacks; the beam becomes a far more powerful straight shot for a limited time and the basic shot turns into a spread shot to take out high and low enemies at the same time.

This is a point that can probably be countered with “well, maybe you shouldn’t be so STUPID then;” but this whole business of holding down the shield button to get more powerful attacks has this side effect of making it easy to forget that you have a shield at all. This is especially bad if you’re playing on one of the higher difficulty settings where using your shield to quickly slip through an onslaught of laser beams will be absolutely essential. Also, it’s kind of weird how your shield still remains active while using the special attacks; it seems like a bit of bad balancing that it’s totally a legitimate strategy to fly right in front of a boss and wail on him with your super beam for a few seconds and not even worry about dodging his attacks.

The lack of special pick up weapons in this game seems like a more glaring issue when the weapons you are given are pretty limp and lack impact. The continuous beam shot especially feels weak; it feels like you’re gently slapping the enemies with a sock full of custard, and there’s just no weight or impact when it connects or appropriate feedback of what damage it may or may not be doing.

Overall, Procyon is very cheap and pretty much inoffensive. It does pack a meaty challenge for the hardcore crowd (as well as containing an utterly pointless easy mode where the game may as well just open a link to a Youtube video of someone beating the game for you) and although it lacks a bit of polish here and there it is a fun game. Not quite as good as The Flying Hamster, but then again what is?