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Finally, someone - Petite Games, has gone to the trouble of building a fun low-poly 3D engine that could host all sorts of exciting game types on the Vita. Following on from 2018's
Super Destronaut, Land Wars puts some classic shooting action on the ground in a vivid 3D boxy landscape.
The action is a series of 30 challenges, shoot x, collect y gold, buy this and so on, all with time limits for the better medals. Be fast, be accurate and you should have no trouble, but the later challenges put you on minimal health or up the difficulty, so some stealth is required or using jump to avoid incoming fire, all to a natty Daft Punk-esque soundtrack.
The enemies follow the style and movement patterns of their arcade legacy, and as the difficulty ramps up you can find nests of them around every corner. I guess a mini-map would be a cool extra, especially to find the store, but no major loss. Note, while these screens look dull, rather like the Switch version, they are gorgeous on the OLED Vita screen.
The arcade modes offer varying inhibitors to make life tough as you aim for a high score. Its all simple fun in this bright little world, where despite the jump button, the higher ramparts seem destined to remain out of reach. So far so fun, slightly jollied up by treats like Rampage Mode and the in-game store where you can buy new weapons and gizmos to make the action slightly easier to handle.
Given the arena nature its a shame there isn't multiplayer mode (not on the Switch version either), but, this simple fun hints at so much more. I remain curious and furious as to why the early 3D shooters in the Doom and Quake series never made it to the Vita (officially that is, homebrewers can knock themselves out), yet here's something a developer could use to make neat RPGs, like Stately Snail's
One More Dungeon, original story-based shooters, craft based racers and much more.
But that's a hoped for future, Land Wars itself offers short bursts of vibrant shooting action with decent replay value, using multipliers to boost scores. The random nature of enemies appearing means you can complete some challenges in a few seconds, while others take a few goes until luck falls your way, but for the money dive in and remember the good old days of simple early 3D shooters.
Price: £3.99 (PSN)
Developer/publisher Petite Games
File size 122MB
Progress: Shot many aliens
