Oh Pen guin Massacre, your name is so obscure, one might assume that you would be frollicking in the meadows of a peaceful RPG with tiny wise men weilding large staffs that wish you to teach the ways of old. But no, once you enter this game you are emersed in penguin bloodshed. O the humanity, er penguinity?

Anyways, you start off at the top of a snow covered mountain with your gun and your igloo. Penguins begin flooding in from the left and marching towards you. What is a lone penguin atop a mountain to do? Why shoot them down of course and so begins your terrible journey through 25 levels of penguin assault.

After you complete the first level, you are brought to a screen where you can buy weapons of greater destruction than the first pea shooter you were so generously given. My advice when purchasing your newest weapon, don't bother grabbing it unless you can upgrade it. I found that when I bought a weapon without being able to upgrade the reload speed, it was difficult to use. The default reload on those weapons is super slow and it almost cost me the level more than once. I think reload speed is the most important upgrade to buy for your weapon. While we are on the subject of guns, I never was able to buy the last gun that costs 50k. I was constantly upgrading the new weapons that I was getting and that hindered me from being able to purchase it before the game was over. It's something to consider if you like to grab all the weapons offered.

Also, on the shop screen you will notice the ability to buy a gunman, repairman, building repair and building HP upgrade. I played through all 25 levels without buying the HP upgrade and only using the repair one time. This may be due to the fact that I bought the repairman at about level 5 and he was hard at work for most of the game. The repairman won't be your saving grace however if your igloo is super low on HP. I watched him one entire round and he repaired aproximately 25 points of damage throughout the entire round, so don't rely on him to keep you going if you are low, just be safe and buy the full HP restore. How about that gunman? First off, unless I broke the game, you can only get one of these guys. He's slow, he doesn't do much dps but he can save your butt if you are in a pinch. I think he is worth the purchase.

Onto some hopefully useful tips. There are two types of enemy that attack you, flying and ground. The ground units will attack your base until they die and the flying units bomb your base upon reaching it. This makes it important to dispatch of the flying units before they reach you because you can't stop their damage. Included in the attackers section are tiny little ghost penguins. These little guys are a pain because you can only damage them when they are not ghosted. Make sure you keep your eye on the little buggers till you get the chance to gun them down.

All in all, it was a pretty good game. A bit on the long side, I think it took me 30 minutes to complete and I didn't notice any signs of a save and continue later type button, but still a game worthy of play. I hope you all enjoyed reading my first review and now it's time to say goodbye to all our.. wait what was that? Enjoy the game!

-Deku

Last Edited on 20 December 2009 @ 10:13am