This console generation has really been focused on twin stick shooters like Geometry Wars and Super Stardust HD. Good old fashioned shmups just aren’t getting the love they used too.
But Duality ZF aims to change that!
First off, forget the whole “one lone ship against an alien armada” cliché. Duality ZF supports up to four players, and not only that, utilizing the dual sticks and triggers, each player can control two ships at a time. Add in that this isn’t a slow paced shmup but furious bullet hell shooter, and you’ve got a pretty exhilarating experience.
Video courtesy of Xona Games
The game itself is a vertically scrolling shooter with a little bit of horizontal scrolling. It’s like Raiden in that respect, but the similarities end there. This game seems to throw so many enemies and projectiles at you that it’s amazing. There’s so much going on at any given moment! You’re armed with some pretty powerful weapons to fight back, too. From the trailer, it seems you can use either a laser or spread-type weapon, and between the two of them, I don’t know why you’d need anything else. The spread weapon covers a massive area, and the laser seems to have a good bit of focused power to help annihilate everything in your path.
The typical problem with a shmup is that it has too much going on making it imposible for players to keep track of everything on the screen at once, but, in the case of this game, that isn’t an issue thanks to the artwork. The crisp, colorful art style makes it easy to see what’s going on. From the footage, you can see that they’ve avoided the typical problem of not being able to tell what’s a projectile.
The real strength to Duality ZF is in its game design, though. The game creator’s love of the genre really shines through with so many different gameplay modes and several control schemes. The game contains 8 stages with some impressive looking bosses. There are 6 different play modes including: Home, Arcade, Score Rush, Bullet Hell, Survival, and Boss Rush, all of which look crazy fun!
With 96 leaderboards, you can bet Duality ZF will become the ‘go to’ game for score chasing with your friends.
Duality ZF is launching on XNA this summer, and with its price tag of 400 MS points, this could be the best deal on the Xbox Marketplace.
looks amazing! let us know when it’s out.