Redux: Dark Matters (PC) Review

Redux: Dark Matters is a modern old school Western shoot 'em up title. A genre that is almost extinct and usually seen as either a relic of the past, a phenomenon almost unique to the Japanese arcade halls, or even a long running Bullet Hell franchise that should have long since ended. However, Redux: Dark Matters is very much real and a good experience and well worth paying attention to.

The most charming aspect is the fact that it remains close to its main source of inspiration and strictly avoids the pitfall of trying to reinvent the wheel. Its simple power-up systems and stereotypical enemies keep that feeling of the arcade halls of old, and it also retains an air of authenticity. While Redux: Dark Matters does nothing groundbreaking, it does give fans of the genre what they want - a good, solid old school shoot 'em up experience.

One important ingredient in any great arcade shmup is a high, skill demanding difficulty level. This is something that Redux: Dark Matters keeps close to heart. While it is not the most difficult game, it does keep the arcade difficulty expected and avoids feeling overly unfair and, therefore, alienating newcomers. The problem is, however, that the difference between normal and the veteran levels is pretty thin, with normal offering more features on the ship than the veteran difficulty, which means that if wanting to get the full experience, ironically, playing on Normal is the way to go. Not that it damages much, though, as there are barely any differences at all besides the ship navigated, but if expecting a heavier challenge on veteran, sadly there is just disappointment.

One weird design flaw is the way items are layered on-screen in terms of what is important to the gameplay. The most important piece of information should undeniably be enemy bullets that must be dodged. Therefore, it would be logical to stack them above the bullets of the ally ship and incoming power-ups, correct? No, in Redux: Dark Matters they are layered below all of these. This would not be a problem, though, if the bullets shot by the player-controlled spacecraft were not ridiculously large compared to the enemy bullets, and the gold nuggets that act as the score after enemies are defeated were sometimes bigger than actual bosses, easily covering enemy projectiles to the point where there is no way to see them in advance of crashing into them, thus causing some cheap deaths due to causes unknown.

The difficulty at times seems to be more about hiding information from the player rather than making them plan their flight and use their reflexes to avoid fast projectiles. For example, in the second stage some enemies are pseudo-invisible. Enemies can be flowers on the walls or fish that hide under the water, which might camouflage them very well from sight, making it hard to see them properly.

Other than that flaw, Redux: Dark Matters is very well-made and, while not groundbreaking or innovative in any way, succeeds perfectly with its task of retain the feel of older entries of the genre in a pure and authentic way. For fans of the Western shoot 'em ups of old that used to dominate the arcades so is this a must buy.