Meltdown is an engaging arcade shooter by Phenomenon Games. You play as Zed, a stoic cool guy who must shut down the core of an abandoned space station overtaken by a deadly crew of robots. The game boasts over 30 randomly generated levels, online co-op, arena challenges, and special skills and weapon upgrades.
The graphics and animation are well done in Meltdown, but the real gem is the music. The music is incredible and really gets you in the zone. If you’re a fan of techno/dub step, I guarantee you, you will love the music. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend this game for the music alone, but it definitely helps set the mood.
Gameplay is pretty simple. To dodge enemy fire, you can roll past, duck behind various blockades, or strafe. You can shoot down enemies in a rain of bullets or get up close and personal with your melee weapon. Zed will encounter a variety of enemies from stationary turrets to angry robots with wrenches. Enemy combat styles ranging from explosive to melee will keep you on your toes. There aren’t many opportunities to strategize as enemies pop without much warning or indication. That being said, I wouldn’t call this game tactical. I found myself desperately tumbling about rather than utilizing the covers as many enemies simply float over the blockades.
Enemies drop a variety of items including EXP, gold, 1-ups, and upgrade chips. With each level, you earn skill points to spend on three different skill branches. Gold can be spent on performance-enhancing equipment or upgrading weapons which require additional upgrade chips. I absolutely love the customizability of this game. Want more firepower? There’s a skill tree for that. If you want to use your ammo more efficiently there’s a skill tree for that too. Equipment stats include greater damage, faster reload rates, and even higher coin drop rates for farming.
Speaking of farming, you’ll be doing a lot of that. Items and upgrades are expensive and you’ll be quickly overwhelmed on harder levels. You’ll have no choice but to return to previous missions and spam them. Floor levels aren’t exactly long and grueling but it does get very repetitive.
My main gripe with this game is the controls. You have a choice between auto-shooting (which is activated by tapping an onscreen button) and manual shooting (by swiping two fingers on your target). Hardcore gamer or not, unless you have four hands or freaky octopus fingers, you’ll find manual shooting to be well nigh impossible when you have to simultaneously tap like crazy to get out of harm’s way. Trying to move Zed around various covers and enemies by tapping the screen proved to be incredibly frustrating. To add insult to injury, there’s no crowd control ability. If you’re battling an onslaught of enemies, you’ll quickly find both your ego and tapping finger will end up a tad sore.
Fortunately, there are two control alternatives. You can either sync your device with a game controller (which I don’t have) or use an on-screen controller. The latter made moving a lot easier but targeting and shooting became unreliable when I strafed or backed up. Playing on a 10-inch tablet made even the on-screen controller a bit tedious. It simply doesn’t feel as intuitive as an actual handheld game console.
Frustrating controls aside, the game kept me interested for a good hour or two before the constant wipeouts made me give up for good. Equipped with an actual game controller or even some crowd control abilities, Meltdown Premium is a perfectly engaging and challenging game. It may even play better on a phone than a large tablet. The customizable equipment and characters, randomized maps, and diverse enemy AI definitely make this game worth your time and money but seriously consider investing in a controller.
HARDCORE?
Kinda...
With solid graphics, music, and game content, Meltdown is on its way to becoming a great game. Controls and repetitive gameplay was a sore spot.