by Nicole Selley

Created on: September 27, 2008   Last Updated: August 23, 2009

Optimus Apparatus projects you in the driving seat of a spaceship shooter. Your challenge is to fly missions in 15 different worlds. The better you fly and fight the enemies you encounter, the more cash you win. And the more cash you win, the more options to upgrade your spaceship - and in turn become an even better pilot and fighter - you'll get.

On your way you can shoot your enemies and then pick up their components. But you need to balance your spaceships abilities, energy costs and weights and this can become quite complicated due to the number of different ways this can be done in.

Your key challenge without a doubt is to construct the most effective combat machine, basically the "Optimus Appartus" and then to prove your spaceships effectiveness by passing a number of challenging missions.

Having played the game, I am not a big fan. I found the screen layout confusing with grey/blue colours and a large number of maps, mini-maps, selections and indicators clattering the screen. There are no colours within the game, which you might consider straightforward, but just bored me. The actual maps look quite realistic though.

There is no background music and the only sound is the shooting or if you crash into rocks or the enemy which I did a lot and made the experience rather boring. I have to admit, I am not very experienced with this type of game and was just curious to try, but with having to use quite a range of keys on my keyboard (w, a, d, s and arrows), I was just overwhelmed and didn't know what to press most of the time.

On entering the game it took me a few minutes to find out what to do and where to find the rules - they weren't easy to find on the rather busy screen. Once I found them it still took me quite a bit of time to read and understand them - they were written in a tiny font over pages and pages and I struggled reading it to the end without loosing patience and interest.

If you enjoy the type of space shuttle shoot-out games and are experienced in the controls to be used, this game might be for you. But I would not recommend it to beginners. Whilst it is a creative game with a large number of challenges and the different worlds and maps give you a lot of variety, but be prepared to spend quite some time on learning what to do and how to progress. It also can be quite monotone and I tired of the game quite soon.

Rating 2 of 5

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