Reviews

GLASS stands for Game Lords Alien Strike Simulator and that's a fair description as it's very much a straightforwards shoot 'em up.

The game consists of hundreds of different stages, although they essentially come in three basic flavours. You're either racing along on the surface of a planet - Deathchase style - through a forest of giant cylinders, blasting at aliens flying towards you over a glassy blue plain, or shooting at giant alien spacecraft as they scroll by beneath a chequer-board patterened planet.

Graphically, programmer Paul Hargreaves has used pretty much every trick in the book and the game still looks great, with a real impression of speed, superb detail, and effects like lightning and shading adding to the look. The most impressive sequence has you flying over a chequer-board pattened planet towards a city before launching a nuke, blowing it apart pixel by pixel.

Unfortunately, graphics don't make a game and neither does the huge number of levels either. All three types are essentially very simple to play and don't really develop your twitch skills much. All the while, your shields are gradually being sapped and it's only a matter of time before they run out. You can continue for more goes when you die, but starting the game from scratch sends you through the same levels again, making it rather boring to play.

Ultimately, it's a nice game for a quick blast once in a while, but has no real depth or longevity. Still, it's not as if most modern shooters don't suffer from similar afflictions despite having an even greater level of graphical sheen on them.

Psychedelic space cockpit shoot'em up.

I liked this. It's straightforward and plays quite nicely, except controlling your crosshair is a bit iffy and sensitive at times and the playing area in the shooting levels is so basic it makes it look difficult to determine if you are actually moving or not. I agree that the game has a lack of depth to it, it can get drawn out and repetitive rather quickly, but given the crap I've played recently I probably enjoyed this more than I should have, not that I'm complaining.