Remote Life [Xbox]

A 2D side-scrolling shoot-‘em-up developed by Next Game Level, Remote Life has seventeen missions for you to complete, taking on a variety of monstrous creatures that are getting dangerously close to Earth. After a few failed missions by previous ship pilots, you’ve now been sent out to deal with the threat, and find out more about what is going on. As well as the standard missions, you’ve got Escort missions, where you’ll have to accompany huge freighters to their destination - and these can be quite a challenge due to how much screen-space they take up (and therefore how easy they are for enemies to impact). Additionally, there are levels which follow a different styled map, in which you will seek out and destroy certain energy sources, and this plays out differently to the usual side-scrolling style used elsewhere.

You’ve got Class A, B and C weapons that can be cycled between, and fired using the trigger, with different weapon pick ups available throughout the levels. You’ve also got D Class weapons that can be activated by using the B button, and these include weapons such as proximity mines. Your weapons will be your main line of defence against the wide range of enemies, both big and small, that pose a threat to your very existence, and your proficiency in using them whilst navigating the levels will be the deciding factor as to whether you live or die. Trying to keep your distance from enemies is easier said than done, with many of them catching you off guard at times - so you’ll need to stay aware of your surroundings. Levels consistently pan to the right, forcing you to make decisions about where you’ll direct your ship, as the environment itself is one of the biggest threats; bumping into it will deal damage - costing you a heart each time, leading to plenty of frustrating deaths, or trapping yourself with nothing to do but lose a heart (or die, if you’re unlucky).

The art style is striking, with disturbing sci-fi-horror styled enemies, both from the smaller bug-like enemies to the larger, industrial/mechanical styled creatures. The contrast between the background and foreground can sometimes be a bit of a pain, resulting in plenty of deaths from hard-to-spot threats, or objects that are difficult to distinguish from the environment. Some enemies release small pollen-like dots around them, and these can be very easy to bump into when amongst all of the chaos.

The soundtrack is very bouncy, with intense beats that definitely help to keep you alert - though they can make things feel a little more… panicked. During levels you’ll sometimes hear a loud beeping, which signifies an explosive enemy is nearby, and that you’ll have to deal with them before they detonate - wiping you out in the process - so being aware of these is important too. The voice acting is a little odd, to say the least, with robotic text-to-speech voices for each of the characters, leading us to the assumption that the characters were possibly androids instead of humans, which would have made a bit more sense, given a lot of the other visuals throughout the game and menus.

It can feel punishing at times in a rather unfair way, with the aforementioned environmental hazards that are frequently so hard to see that you’ll end up dying way more than you feel you should. Likewise, some enemies shoot you from off-screen - leaving you almost no chance of reacting on time, and this too felt pretty frustrating - especially when you end up dying at the 99% completion mark in a level! The overall difficulty is mixed, with the levels themselves feeling quite challenging (even on easier difficulties), but the bosses themselves don’t cause much of a problem, but the levels are enjoyable nonetheless.

As you progress through the levels, moving up through the ranks from Captain to Colonel to General, you’ll unlock additional, faster ships that help to make it easier to navigate - though getting used to the increased speed can cause a few issues. You can choose from one of four colours to customise your ship, though this is the extent of the control you have over personalising your character, though you can add filters to the overall visual style, such as Arcade or 8-bit filters. There are different options such as to add a radar to warn for incoming enemies, or setting adjustments to remove various effects such as explosions or shadows, and you can toggle the vibration on/off if these are things you’d benefit from. The game starts out at the lowest difficulty setting too, which took us by surprise since it was still pretty difficult! The story is reasonably stereotypical, with a “hero saves the day” trope, but it’s a decently fun and demanding shmup, so if it sounds like one you want to try out, you can get it for £14.99 on Xbox.

In the end, we decided to give Remote Life the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.

Are you interested in Remote Life? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to PR Hound for the Remote Life Xbox review code!