Cardiaxx

Castef 2021-03-20
(5/10)
Side note: you could disable the huge score in the middle of the game.

Does this make the game better? Not so much...
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marco.nadal.75 2018-09-16
(2/10)
Graphics: Good
Audio: Good
Playability: Non-existant, nope, none, zero fun

Cardiaxx is a good example of how a few lines of code can stand between the player and a decent game, and the importance of metrics.

The height of Giana's jump;

Turrican's chargeup delay for his plasma whip;

The respawn rate in all those other games;

Those things must be carefully calibrated, both by the designers, beta testers, and random people who have never touched the game before.

If the ship in Cardiaxx could only travel at its slowest speed (about the same as the R-9), this game would work; as it is, it doesn't work. That's probably a few binary values in the game's code, but very difficult to reverse-engineer.

A missed opportunity, since most horizontal shooters follow the Scramble, Gradius and R-Type template, and I like the speed and direction control in games such as Uridium, Wizball, Defender, and Strike Force (1991, Midway). That form of 2D shooter is a lot rarer, and could be explored more in my opinion.

For a more recent entry, there's a "3D son of Uridium" call Futurium which is freeware I think, and PomPomGames Astro Tripper and Space Tripper are worth checking out.

If Cardiaxx has left a bad taste in your mouth, gives those other games a look.
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e5150 2017-06-22
(4/10)
Smooth full screen scrolling, but extremely poor controls and confusing score in the middle of the screen. Title screen music out of tune.
Could have very easily been much better if there had been some quality control.
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tripper 2014-09-12
Electronic Zoo seems to be the publisher, not Team17. Team17 only published the bargain version later.
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mailman 2012-10-07
(6/10)
Super smooth and super fast with excellent soundtrack and fx! These things describe this game from its good side. Now, let's go to the downsides - pace of the game makes it unbelieveably difficult. Add to this good graphics but overloaded with score written in huge numbers in the middle of the screen and you get something very unique but still tremendous to play. In overall the concept of the game is genuine, even if some may find a resemblance to an old "Defender". The game is one of the kind. Worth playing and some of you may even like it. I did but I don't hide that sometimes it was a bit irritating.
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jaycee900 2012-06-20
Just to note this isn't a Team 17 game as such, they only published the budget re-release, Electronic Zoo first published this in 1991.
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Pendler 2010-06-05
(3/10)
By far the most viscous enemy in this game are the astonishingly bad controls. Rather than engaging in some actual space shooter action, I ended up jacking the joystick back and forth the whole time in an attempt to counter the ship's awkward momentum. The game sure looks and sounds nice enough, but it's practically unplayable in my opinion.
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Chuckles 2009-04-29
(3/10)
What could I possibly add to the other comments? Nothing. Which is probably being generous.
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steef-online 2007-12-12
(6/10)
Mediocre graphics combined with nice music and sound FX in this Team 17 shooter. Unfortunately the gameplay is very frustrating. While trying to avoid enemy fire you go from left to right, trying to hit your enemies again and again. And because the speed of the game is set pretty high, it is difficult to do this very precisely. While everything works very fluently, there is not that much fun to get out of this.

Graphics: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 6/10

Overall: 6/10
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Sakura_Star1 2006-04-05
(7/10)
Nice title & ingame tunes, worth to play, but hard to control the main ship.

7/10
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Guybrush Threepwood 2005-06-05
(7/10)
This game was OK, it was just a basic shoot em up with some nice touches but I think the like of Project X were much better by miles
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