Revolt Review

It's been awhile since I've seen a solid dual stick shooter come along. Maybe the industry needed some time off from the dual stick shooter craze of 2009. It seemed like every other game in the App Store was some variation of iDracula, and that dual stick survivors would be what the iOS would be known for. Fortunately for society, time passed and the genre moved past plain survival and on to full games with levels that actually end.

Revolt stands firmly in the new age of dual stick shooting that uses real level structures, detailed maps, and actual stories. The feeling you get playing Revolt is that of which you would get playing an early "turn of the century" game on a PC. Like many in that era of gaming, the guns are all huge, the stories are all post-apocalyptic, and the developers got extremely lighting happy in the level design.

Past anything else in the game; past the guns, the story, the bad guys, you'll notice the lighting effects. It's pretty obvious that the vast majority of the time spent making Revolt was on the level design and lighting, and it turned out rather well. Levels are all carefully designed, and at times the lighting will really wow you. Beautiful spotlights will shine from the ground, and many rooms have that eerie but oh so satisfying glow coming from the nooks and crannies.

Once you get over the lighting and the slick graphics though, the rest of the game is pretty generic. The story is your basic Matrix type story, where you were shown the evil ways of the robots and are now trying to destroy them. As far as your character knows though, he is the last living human... so I don't really know who he's fighting for. I guess he just wants to cause some pain. With destruction in mind, you work your way through all the games levels blowing up the robots with your guns, grenades, and anything else you can get your grubby little fingers on. Like any other dual-stick shooter, you shoot what moves and hope that the things that don't move will blow up.

As far as dual-stick shooters go, Revolt will provide more thrills and tough moments than many others in the genre, but most of the enjoyment will subside once you get past the lovely graphics. If you're a fan of the genre you'll have a ton of fun with Revolt, but there really aren't any "wow" moments in the gameplay to warrant a universal buy.