Shoot 1UP  Mommy's Best Games

Imagine a world to invade, a ship to control, and another couple dozen ships out there to help you.  It's a shoot'emup where you can become the bullet hell.  Shoot1UP plays like any other shooter, but you will collect ships as well as more powerful weapon capabilities.  When you have more ships, you can control the squadron formation with the shoulder buttons.  Keeping them apart will give you a giant beam of death that is formed in the middle of your ships called the Plasma Auger.  You will need a lot of ships in your squadron to survive, because the amount of enemies on screen during parts of the game makes it nearly impossible to keep all of your ships.  The more ships you have will also dictate how powerful your weapon is: more ships, more firepower!  After each level, the game will tell you the maximum amount of ships you acquired, and will also tell you how many were destroyed.  Thanks, dick.  But it's all in good fun, and this is another indie game that is made by people who love videogames.

Above: 1 or 2 players, tons of enemies, tons of points, lots of explosions. Confusing?  Yes.  Fun?  Oh, yeah!

Boss battles in Shoot1UP are crazy.  For one, the bosses are huge.  Secondly, the all of your ships shooting at once, and the boss shooting at you, and some other enemy ships shooting at you as well, it's hectic.  The license plate looking things in the above screen are scores, so you'll probably be running after them as well.  The best part about all of this, the slow down is not there!  Excellent.  At certain points of the game, you will come upon some branches to choose from- do you want to go forward?  Ok.  Do you want to go into free-flight where there isn't a set path to go, where you just spin around and blast away at the enemy?  That's fine, too.  Whichever direction you choose to go, you will have lots of targets to take out.

Above: Bosses?  Holy shit.

Shoot1UP looks like an old-school shooter from the late 80s or early 90s, but don't let that deter you.  I know, there are games like Mars Matrix, Einhander, Raiden Project and Raystorm out there, and they look fantastic and play just as good as they look.  Shoot1UP looks retro, but plays with the best of the shoot'emups.  Trust me, I've played tons of 'em.

There are 17 in-game awards, similar to the achievement process but not counting towards your gamerscore or achievements, but like always, what are achievements, anyway?  You can also unlock a different ship to use by shooting two "Mommy's Best Games Pies" in one game, these targets are bronze tokens that might look like pies in HD, but on an SDtv, it looks like a bronze token.  The second ship has a slightly different look to its main weapon, but it's more or less a cosmetic look.  This game has a 3/3 rating for "SEX" in the XBLI game ratings, but that may just be because there's a woman in it with boobs that are metallic domes or something.  Nothing sexual, but if you see sexuality, I recommend professional help.  Otherwise, for $1, Shoot1UP is a must-have for shoot'emup fans out there.

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