Welcome one and all to another weekly episode of Time Waster Reviews!
This week I’m taking a look at one that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while; one of those ‘seen it, but didn’t play it yet’ titles. But now that I have played it, I felt it good enough to be shared with you guys. So let’s get started.
Lazerman is a very simple game in more than one way, which made it easy to pick up, understand and play. You are a head, just a head, that was separated from your body during some secret military experiment. Now you need a new body, and must ransack the lab you wake up in in order to gather up parts and materials to build it. But as a head, how do you get around? This is where the game’s main mechanic comes in.
Despite being only a head, you have the ability to fly around with the use of lasers (or maybe it’s ‘lazers’ in this universe?). All you have to do, as a player, to make that happen is hold down the mouse button and your head will shoot off in the direction you’re clicking. By doing this you will destroy whatever you hit, including people. Other than flying around, the only other mechanic in the game is the ability to shrink yourself down into a smaller ball. You will find yourself doing this a lot as you are undetectable by people and turrets this way (bosses don’t count). Also when small you have much more control over your flight pattern, which is good for getting around laser beams and explosive barrels.
The entire game isn’t really that big. There are 25 levels in all; a boss at the end of each set if five. You will be doing the same thing in each: collecting boxes of parts in order to open up the exit and leave. It’s pretty straight forward, the real challenge only coming from your surroundings and the killable humans with guns. But that’s enough to satisfy. It all really comes down to the layout of the level, because some of them are real pains in the neck to get through.
I had a few issues with the game in terms of play, but nothing that was too drastic. My biggest complaint would be Rampage mode (achieved after getting a destroy combo of 25). Yeah being invincible is fun, but when killing people makes their guts cover my screen, it’s impossible to see where I’m really going and take full advantage of it; especially when I’m killing multiple people at a time. The only other thing I could complain about were the boss battles and their lack of diversity. Maybe I was supposed to develop a strategy with them, but all were able to be defeated by madly clicking on them, retreating for a health pack, and then doing it again until the boss was dead. It was a little disappointing.
But even with boss battles that didn’t quite hold up, the game was still fun and pretty nice to look at. That said, Lazerman earns 3.5 GiN Gems out of 5!