Remote Life is a twin stick shooter cleverly disguised as a horizontally scrolling classic styled 2-D shooter.  You’ll warp to locations to shoot scary space bugs, collect power-ups, and try not to get hit.  It’s available on nearly all current consoles, PC, and mobile devices, but reviewed on Switch here.

In each mission you’ll move with the L stick and shoot in any direction with the R stick, even though your spaceship is moving constantly forward like a 2-D shooter.  The game really requires you to shoot enemies in all directions.  You can change between three different weapons with the L and R shoulder buttons, and collect power-ups that temporarily increase the power of one of those weapons or give you an extra side ship, but neither last very long.  When you finish levels you’ll go up in rank, and when you reach certain ranks you can acquire new and better ships to use.

I had two main problems with this game.  One is that it’s way too hard, and the default difficulty setting is even on Easy!  The other problem is that your ship moves WAY too slow, which just adds to the frustration.  I know you can get better and faster ships, but I think it would’ve been more fun had your initial ship went faster.  At least the game has plenty of content and decent music.  If you like shooters such as R-Type, you may want to check this one out.

Kid Factor:

Remote Life is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Violence.  The game claims to have horror styled graphics, but I didn’t think they were any scarier than other 2-D shooters.  I didn’t notice any blood, but sometimes the ESRB considers bug guts as such.  Anything else just explodes when destroyed.  But really the best reason why this game is better for older players is the high difficulty.

Tags: Game Reviews