Wiping out these enemies yields helpful power-ups that enable bombs, phalanx lasers, and other destructive options. As your tiny ship blasts through scrolling starfields, dozens of nasties fly towards you on a collision course. But when you fire up Demonstar, it may leave you asking, "Is this it?"ĭemonstar is the most simplistic shooter you could ask for. This game is basically a one-man show - both the programming and art come from Raptor's lead designer, and the audio portion was performed by Bobby Prince, Apogee's pet composer. Now, Raptor's core team has returned to bring us Demonstar. However, Raptor's graphics and gameplay took the shooter genre to a whole new level, and by allowing you to trade in cash for powerful new weapons, injected some strategy as well. Before Raptor's release, PCs were snubbed as too "underpowered" to handle graphically intense shooters, and console gamers took great pleasure in rubbing our noses in games like Keio Flying Squadron and Super Turrican. When Apogee released Raptor: Call of the Shadows in 1993, it was universally heralded as a genre-busting action game. Unless you're looking to see a dreary clone that should have been called Raiden III, there's no need to play Demonstar. I can't manage to shake the feeling that I actually would have more fun by playing Raptor instead of Demonstar even though it's close to four years old by now. Maybe the reason I'm so disappointed with this title is that I set my sights way too high based on what Raptor offered in the past, but I tend to think that isn't the case. Explosive effects were handled nicely, but aside from that the bosses, levels, and enemies were of average quality at best. Since it resembles Raiden in every other imaginable way, it's no surprise that the graphical quality of Demonstar isn't really much better. When blasting away at the enemies, I did find the sound effects to be adequate though uninspired. The soundtrack for this game might have been created by Bobby Prince, the guy who created the music for Duke Nukem 3D, but it's not very entertaining. If any other factors that were key to the success of a shooter came to mind, they would be graphics and sound. In case you need to clear the screen of enemies when the action gets too hot to handle, nuke bombs are available, once again just like in Raiden. Even at the most powered up level all armaments are wholly unimpressive and certainly aren't anything shooter fans haven't seen before. I find it truly odd that the people who gave you every sort of imaginable weapon (including carrots) in their last game have seen fit to give you nothing more than colored lines, tiny missiles, and tiny dots as weaponry.
DEMONSTAR STRATEGY SERIES
Just as in Raiden, you'll come across powerups of varying colors which provide different weapons, and collecting a series of one color allows you to achieve maximum power in one of these weapon categories. Most shooters these days offer some innovation over the market's current line of games, but for some reason the same people who had made Raptor so fascinating made Demonstar into little more than a tired old Raiden clone.Īt the heart of any shoot em up is the selection of powerups and special weapons that can be employed. Along the way, you'll destroy aerial enemies and ground installations, pick up a host of powerups, discover warps to other areas, and just do some damage in general. Tons of enemies come at you in waves as you move through the eighteen uninteresting and overly hyped levels, requiring you to be quick with the old trigger finger.
Now that I've gotten a chance to try it out, it would be fair to say I feel somewhat cheated.ĭemonstar is a vertical scrolling shooter in which you take control of the RaptorX prototype ship and take on the Xidus Armada by your lonesome self.
Having enjoyed the previous game so much, as it was nothing short of spectacular when it debuted several years back, I was really hyped up to try out Demonstar.
DEMONSTAR STRATEGY PC
Demonstar, fresh off the presses from Ionos and Moutain King Studios, hopes to pick up where Raptor left off by providing PC gamers with some good old fashioned arcade action. We begged, we pleaded, we waited for years, and finally the sequel to Raptor has arrived.
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