Act: KaiJin [by Phelios]

Phelios has been one of the busier Indie Game Companies over the last couple of years.  In addition to creating games, they have tried to create an easy to use Game Engine for other Indie Developers to use in making games.  I've often looked at their website and the games that they have available, but due to the extremely large size of the demo downloads (10+ MB) I have always skipped over them.

However with the release of KaiJin I decided to take the plunge and at least check out this one.  I was very pleasantly surprised by the game.  KaiJin is an overhead shooter.  That is a very difficult game to create in today's age as there were so many wonderful overhead shooters in the late 80s and early 90s, such as Dragon Spirit and the Raiden Series, that there seems to be precious little that can be added to the genre.

In the case of KaiJin, the game is pretty solid though it doesn't come off being better than either of those aforementioned games from years ago.  However there are some really strong points to the game.  The first of which is the overall Oriental feel to the game.  From the Japanese styled title screen through the world of interestingly designed enemies and backgrounds, the game has been created to transport you to a world that is rather different than you are used to seeing in a shooter.  The only unfortunate side here is that the graphics don't offer all that much in the way of 'wows' other than the last weapon you can power up to.

The music is another story altogether.  I played the game again and again just to hear the music playing in the background.  Perhaps I just have a thing for oriental sounding music, but I found the music in the game to be truly tremendous and HIGHLY recommend sitting through the 16MB download so that you can hear the music.

In the end KaiJin is an interesting little shooter that provides a couple of thrills but isn't really the cream of the Indie Shooter crop when you compare it to such games like Demonstar SM1 (and SM2)  from Mountain King.  I think the game it is most  similar to is Dragon Spirit, though that 16 year old classic is actually better than this title, and due to the strong similarities in the strenght of music in both games, fans of that game will likely enjoy playing through this one.

Added: April 26th 2004
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
Score:
Related Link: Download KaiJin Now!
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Language: english   

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