Spin City
Frisbees as weapons! Finally a game that marries my love of Windjammers and twin-stick shooters in a single arena based, combat game. With a fun pixel-art look, and deliberately bad bravado for every character, DiskStorm is sure to find a small but dedicated following.
Ric O'Chet
DiskStorm begins its Single Player story with a quick tutorial. Every action on the gamepad is responsive, making the simple controls even easier to pick up. Once you’re done with the basics, you are dumped straight into the game - facing waves of enemies in a selection of wildly varied arenas with the goal of finding treasure.
The waved based combat of each arena feels like Smash TV – only armed with three disks rather than guns. That said, chucking your Frisbees and watching them bounce off walls and obstacles to reach enemies does add some additional tactics. Moving from haunted houses where you must navigate your disk down corridors, to a ship on which pirates move back-and-forth to shrink and expand the play space, the accuracy of your shots get increasingly important. And you will have to work the changing angles to topple bosses that demand precise ricochets to topple.
But with only three disks a lot of your time will be spent trying to gather your ammo for another attack. This can be done by trying to catch them out of the air with a well-timed button press (tricky), or scooping them off the floor when they come to a stop – which will often take you well out of your way and leave you exposed. The tension this adds stops the action becoming mindless, as you must consider each throw against tougher opponents.
Fun for all, less so for one
Fortunately, if you still have one disk to hand you can block and stun enemies with a spin attack. Or, if you are completely without a disk, you have a rolling dodge to deliver you from harm. While both of these moves are purely defensive, how they change depending on your current situation helps further impress on you the tactics of this frenetic game.
The mid-stage and final bosses all feel nicely varied and arena specific - including a massive armadillo and an evil spirit – demanding you make use of all these skills. The standard enemies are a different story however, all sticking to the same formula. By the end of the game you will have seen so many mindless zombies stumbling towards you that you will find their most fearsome attacks dull.
But, maybe the Single Player isn’t the focus. The Multiplayer retains much of basics from the Single Player game, but matches four people against each other. These can get wonderfully chaotic with loads of disks swirling around the room forcing you to dodge and parrying others players’ attacks. With all the different arenas and a good range of game modes – including a single hit death disk, and a collect as many Frisbees as you can – DiskStorm proves a great addition to an evening of multiplayer fun.
Add it to your multiplayer mix
DiskStorm’s lack of base enemy variety does mean that the Single Player starts to become a touch repetitive when played for more than thirty minutes or so - even with the varying areas and bosses. But as part of a full package, with the frantic Multiplayer fun, it is a must for your rotation of competitive local-multiplayer games for you and your friends – providing you have a group you regularly play with.
