Soldner-X for the PC

The future… Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer (the initial S is more of a Z sound, apparently) is, rarely for this millennium at least, a commercial shoot ‘em up developed not in Japan but by German team SideQuest. When it was released in late 2007, quite few parallels were drawn by some critics to both Project X (Amiga and PC) and X2 (Playstation) which weren’t exactly complementary; the only positive comparison is that Team 17′s titles are both beautifully presented and that’s equally true with Soldner-X, from it’s packaging through to the online highscore tables, superb soundtrack and quite frankly gorgeous graphics. But the negative comparisons are down to details such as the default “normal” difficulty setting eating cute Labrador puppies for breakfast (and for players like myself who prefer not to use continues generally, that doesn’t seem to be an option because completing thing is probably going to require them), the movement controls being inertial, the levels taking quite a while to traverse and the worst “crime” of all for some was the use of energy gauges.

And presumably SideQuest were offered a very reasonable cash-in-hand discount on the latter since there are no less than three gauges to worry about during play! Starting with the most important of the lot, the Soldner-X‘s current energy level is in the upper status bar where it cuddles up next to the weapon power indicator; whenever the player takes a hit, that charge level goes down until it reaches zero at which point the ship explodes from not having enough energy or possibly a fatal overload of irony! There are two ways to replenish the bar, one is grabbing a passing energy power-up (which feature green hearts with a number of spots to denote how much power they provide) and the other is to simply complete a level. It’s not all bad news however, because when the energy drops below 20% the ship’s “berserker mode” kicks in; this results in the ship developing a slight jitter vaguely akin to a caffeine overdose and more importantly decreases the amount of damage each impact causes whilst upping the damage done to attackers by the player’s guns. I seem to spend about half of my playing time in berserker mode!

Tanks for the memories...

Since I’ve already mentioned the weapon power gauge I’ll cover that next; it’s the blue one in the upper status bar and works in tandem with the active weapon selected from the list of five in the lower. Every weapon takes energy to fire and, whilst the ship’s default pulse and beam weapons recharge if left unused, the remaining artillery automatically shuts down when it runs out of juice; collecting its own power-up or the weapon cooler item will rejuvenate it for a time. The chaining system adds some complexity to proceedings. Although there’s no complexity here so simply shooting anything attacking the ship increases the current chain and charges that third energy bar at the bottom right of the screen; if enough power is squirreled away, the power-up next to the charge bar is released for the player to grab. Chain energy can either be lost because the weapon in use is switched (by the player or automatically if it runs out of power) and the bar actually needs to be charged multiple times to actually release a bonus, with each of these cycles ending with the player being prompted to change weapon.

So if I’m going to aim any major criticism at Soldner-X it’s probably going to be about complexity; along with keeping an eye on the ship’s energy, players need to watch the status of the weapon’s battery and the current chain charge to avoid losing the hard won energy. This isn’t a game where going in with all guns blazing works all the time, in fact there are several points where players need to decide if it’s better to battle on with the current weapon or switch to something with a bit more kick and lose the chain energy they’ve built up. That’s pretty involved for a genre usually about getting down and dirty with the lasers, but once it’s figured out it at least becomes a little more instinctive.

The Soldner-X takes on a saw point of the second stage.

It’s hard to write about Soldner-X without mentioning the sheer beauty of the thing, everything from the cut scenes (which can thankfully be skipped) through to the player’s craft and its foes are highly detailed and the game runs at a minimum of 1,024 by 768 pixels with HD support for those who have it available. The sound is worthy of note as well, a collection of up-tempo tunes during the game with a separate track kicking in when going berserk and more mellow pieces for the menus and spot. Even the packaging is impressive stuff, the limited edition version I’ve got comes in a shiny black outer sleeve bearing the title logo which in turn contains two DVD cases for the game and soundtrack discs and the hardback tactical guide. When I was naïve in the 1980′s before the popularity of 3D gaming all but killed off my favourite genre commercially, this is how I thought games would look and sound in the future!

The big question has to be if Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer warrants the price tag. The criticisms of the difficulty are fair comment, although the impression I get is that it was aimed more at gamers who like a challenge and it not only offers easier modes but holds the hands of new players as features are introduced by popping up information windows during play. The levels are massive with nastiness in every bite but at least there’s some graphical variation and nice detailing such as the Blade Runner style advertising hoardings of the first level to break things … assuming you’re able to simultaneously concentrate on that and the bedlam around the ship of course.

The nicely presented Soldner-X title page

I’m not entirely sure I could recommend it unreservedly at full retail price (I paid about fifteen quid with the shipping for the limited edition, a special offer that is still running at Play Asia at the time of writing) despite enjoying it immensely and having no intention of leaving the disc to gather dust after this review is written even if I have to start using the damned continues, but for those shoot ‘em up fans who can handle themselves behind the control stick of a fighter it’s at least worth looking into – with large levels, over twenty different power-ups and secret keys that unlock more content later in the game there’s a lot to do. Oh, and if I actually wore a hat I’d be taking it off to whoever took the risk of publishing Soldner-X – hopefully there’ll be more where that came from because the scrolling shoot ‘em up is very sadly neglected on the commercial front in the West these days.

Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer has been available for Windows-based PCs for a year and a half, with a Playstation 3 version being released via PSN at the end of 2008.