Hope for the Future of Shmups
Short version: This year's I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB13S 1N IT!!!1
Long version: Shoot 1UP is on the fast track to be this year's best shmup, which is both a boisterous claim since it's only March, and an unusual claim as its an Xbox Independent release.
Shoot 1UP comes to us from Mommy's Best Games, the team behind last year's superb but criminally overlooked Weapon of Choice, and the pedigree is apparent. The genre evolving innovations that Weapon of Choice brought to side-scrolling shooters have definite echoes in top-down shooter sibling Shoot 1UP.
The main concept behind Shoot 1UP is that while most shmups take your extra lives and put them into storage, Shoot 1UP says, "Hell with it, put them all in play at once". The result is that rather than piloting a single ship, you pilot a phalanx of ships. Besides just adjusting your position on the screen, you can also adjust the tightness and looseness of your phalanx using either the trigger or shoulder buttons, which adds a whole new layer to the strategy.
Going through a wave of enemies from all angles? Widen your formation, and the swath of destruction you cut will widen as the ships spread apart. Flying brazenly into bullet hell? Tighten the formation for more precise navigation through the gauntlet.
Another nice touch that plays with the phalanx’s tightness is bonus scoring. Most enemies drop bonus points that you have to swoop in and collect to receive the score bonus, and the value of the bonuses increase depending on how wide your formation is spread. Essentially, more guts, more glory.
Your phalanx has a couple more neat tricks up its sleeve, as holding down the attack button can cause the ships to combine their fire into an intense Plasma Auger for tough enemies and screen filling bosses, and taking a second to give your shooting finger a break will give you a short range 360-degree burst surrounding each ship for a nice defensive weapon.
Three difficulty levels and a "Score Trek" mode allow for the masochistic game play of your choice. If there's any shortcoming to the game, its firstly that the backgrounds are highly repetitive (something you'll only notice during the short breathers) and secondly that the game itself is rather short. But in-game Achievements and co-op extend the game play and more than make up for these minor faults, and at the $1 price point a game only a fifth as fun and engaging would still be worth the money.