Space Pirate Trainer – In-Depth Review!

Gameplay/My Experience
I start off in a large hanger bay overlooking a large planets terrain covered with lights and glowing cityscapes. In my hands are two large pistol shaped weapons which will serve as my means to destroying robot hordes. Each weapon is able to cycle through different firing modes using the touch pads such as single shot, burstfire, stream or charged shots. In front of me is a large holographic board that displays information such as high scores and other game information.

I start things off by shooting the “lets rock” logo on the holographic menu, everything clears away and im left standing in the bay alone and vulnerable. I take a quick look around before things start and notice a large spaceship behind me which I can only assume belongs to me, everything about this place feels exactly how you think it should in terms of future space ports. Floating billboards, huge sky full of beautiful stars it really sucks you in on the immersion factor.

I am suddenly greeted by a small orb type robot that flys randomly around in flanking maneuvers but doesn’t seem interested in shooting me just yet. I decide not to wait around to see him shoot, I take aim and fire. A solid stream of orange electrified energy spews from both guns into the star filled sky causing a direct hit on the robot and a fiery explosion.

It feels good, the explosion was awesome and i’m feeling pretty confident with my new guns, bring on wave 2. This time I get a few more bots, I discover that raising my arm over my head causes me to pull out a clear riot shield that is able to deflect incoming enemy fire. The robots fly around me trying to surround and flank. I hear a beeping sound as one of the eyes of the robots lights up
and fires. As the lasers approach me time slows down and i’m able to effectively move out of the way or block them with my shield. After a dance around my space I am able to block and shoot down all the remaining bots.

A few waves later i’m now around 9 or 10 things are getting very tense as the robots are getting smarter and more versatile. They fly under the platform i’m standing on to hide from view then pop up firing when i’m busy with others. I dash, jump crouch and do something close to a matrix dodge but bad enough that Morpheus would facepalm. Finally the bots are able to form an effective circle and all fire at once, I desperately attempt to dodge the incoming attacks but am defeated by rounds to the chest and back.

Graphics/Audio
Everything in this game is very top notch in the graphics department the detailed flashes from explosions and the clean cut edges of outgoing and incoming lasers just look fantastic.

The environment is very well detailed and gives you a true feeling of standing on a platform in space. The lighting on the billboards and animations of the guns all come together perfectly for a stunning combo of arcade like action.

The audio is also very well done, The heavy sci fi electro beats put you in an almost dancing like state while you shoot, i found myself almost shooting robots to the beat of the music after awhile. That combined with the high quality sound effects of laser fire and robot explosion really put you in the mood for this title.

VR/Comfort
Very smooth experience and very immersive, I found myself getting right into it within only a few seconds of playing. The fact that your dodging projectiles and constantly re-accessing your environment doesn’t really give you a chance to realize that its not reality. Your brain gets tricked into thinking.. ok we have a threat we need to destroy save us now!

I never had any tracking issues and nothing in this game so far has caused any sense of motion sickness very comfortable experience all around.

My Wishlist
My only real wishes for this title would to add more weapon selections, the mode fire types are cool but id love to have different modeled gun types as well perhaps that will be coming in future versions.

I think it would be a cool add on to be able to change the color of your blaster fire to a custom choice just for fun.

I would also like to have maybe more levels to choose from and a more variety of enemies to fight. Now this is all stuff i’m sure will be coming in future versions but its definitely something that will be required to keep the audiences fresh with novel content.