Phase Clear



Bullet Hell shooters are visual showpiece of obsession. The screen fills with cloudburst of balletic patterns in deadly chromatic colors and the player’s job is to avoid the obsession. That’s not the case when playing Metal Torrent. The game encourages the cluster of bullet activities as when perform correctly, all at once transforming them into luscious cubical obsessions that are very helpful and rewarding to the player.



There are four different play styles. Patter and Random modes have eight phases each and the modes lasted in exactly fifteen minutes to complete. The names of each mode represent enemy confrontations. Then there are two ships to choose from, Accipiter and Bateleur. Choosing Accipiter is similar as choosing easy difficulty for one of the modes and the instruction for this type of ship is that it has a wide infinite blaster (holding the X button) that can almost reach both endpoints of the top edge of the screen when position in the midpoint on the lower edge of the screen. Accipiter also has a pulse weapon (pressing the A button) that is use to transform the bullets within the blast radius into cubes and vaporizes the rest on screen. Finally, of course, is the slide pad to maneuver away from the enemy ship and bullets until readying for pulse weapon usage. Choosing Bateleur is similar as choosing hard difficulty. Its infinite blaster is narrow-range and the pulse weapon been replaced with the laser and the jamming field. A laser can only transform the bullets from a enemy that was destroyed by the laser and the jamming field slows down the bullets within the field’s radius for easy maneuver as the ship is weaker than the Accipiter. Both mining (for cubes) weapons use up the gauge from the bottom screen and it’s very important to not waste the remanding one-third of the gauge. The cubes are self-absorbed, helps refill the mining weapons and ranking up high scores when feverishly collecting the cubes.



The graphics (in both resolutions when playing on the Nintendo 3DS) and the soundtrack are very generic for a shoot ‘em up, however, the same can’t be said for the sound effects and that’s where the enthusiasm presentation for Metal Torrent shines. Every press of the A button is a gamble and the right moment produce a lyric of continuous supply of enrichment. For both ships, the patience for the right act to place your bet in the early phases while progression becomes frantically luck base that must go all in.



Metal Torrent is an eventful fifteen minutes voyage of torrential fun. This bullet hell is less stressful and more casino-like. The gameplay is all about responsive timing and skill when studying the replays of your ranking performance and also viewing high-rank players' replays online (just remember to turn the 3DS wireless on before loading up the game). Watch those bullets blossom.

500 Points on the Nintendo DSi Shop / $4.99 on the Nintendo eShop

Free on eShop for NOA Club Nintendo members until end of April, 2012

7.9 / 10 Skyward points

8- Great This is a great game that might have a few flaws or could have been better, but is still a game we highly recommend!