Metal Torrent

If you're a bullet hell shooter fan and you have a DSi, you might be tempted to buy Metal Torrent to have some bullet hell experience on the go. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't hold up to the premise and the game gets boring after 2 or 3 buss rides.
 

What I expect from a bullet hell shooter is it's high difficulty, elaborate boss bullet patterns and overcoming the challeng e the game presents you. The people that are really good at the genre play them to max highscores. Metal Torrent unfortunately is incredibly easy and has dull bosses. The only thing Metal Torrent has to offer is highscore maxing. In fact, the game is build with that in mind, but by not offering anything besides that it gets boring fast.
 
The game offers two modes (Pattern and Random) and two ships (Accipiter and Bateleur). The two modes are . Pattern makes you fly through 8 pre-made stages, where all the enemies always come at you the same. Random randomizes the waves a bit.
The two ships have different shots and different bombs. Accipiter has a wider shot and more classic " bombs" that destroy all bullets in the vicinity, turning them into point cubes. Bateleur has a narower shot and a force field that "captures" bullets that get turned into point cubes after destroying an enemy. In both cases bomb energy recharges rapidly while collecting point cubes, so bombs aren't a "oh shit" button like in other shooters, but a necessity to get a high score, and get spammed like no tomorrow. That's a pretty big factor contributing to the game difficulty (or lack of thereof). And also the fact that Accipiter auto bombs if it gets hit.
 

Typical gameplay consists of you flying into the middle of the biggest batch of bullets you can find and using a bomb, replenishing your bomb energy in the process and getting a lot of points. Rinse, repeat for 8 short stages with a boss every few stages. Overall one playthrough takes a whooping 15 minutes.
Like I mentioned, bosses are pretty dull. They're there to spit out tons of bullets and let you bomb them for extra points and that's pretty much it. After that you just get to watch credits while the game sums up your score. Then do it all over again.
 
 If you do like going for the highscore despite the low difficulty you'll be happy to find that the game uses Wi-Fi to upload your highscores to a scoreboard for others to see. You can check the top 10 for all 4 game combinations and check your ranking. The top 10 also allows you to download and watch replays. It's nice that the game has these features considering it's focus, but it can't save the game in the long run.
 
It's a shame, because I like the genre and really wanted to like this game, but the game is just not worth the money, unless you're the kind of guy who plays Game Room games just to show up on the leaderboard.