Giveaway of the Day - INCINERATE

Incinerate: (10.7Mb)

Today’s game is a 32.6Mb download with a installed size of 72.1Mb. Installation is a breeze; the unzipped activation/setup file installs to the following path:

C:\Games

There is no desktop icon created so you will have to create your own. If you want a start menu shortcut you will have to go into Documents and Settings which is found in the root directory (C:\).

i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\name\Start Menu\Programs\,

where ‘name‘ equals administrator, or whatever name you use for your account. Just create a new folder within the program folder and add a shortcut from the games executable file. (right click and select create shortcut then copy that to the folder you’ve just created – you can also use the same shortcut and copy it to the desktop or select send to desktop {create shortcut}).

Quote

It is 2074. Astronomers from around the world are watching an asteroid crash into the surface of Mars leaving a huge crater. Clouds of dust and vapor hide the surface of the planet for several long months. Communication with all Martian research stations is lost. When the clouds clear away, people send new spaceships to the Red planet. The spaceships send back shocking news. Hundreds of plants producing arms have been set up on the maimed surface of Mars. Thousands of machines stock the mineral deposits that had been brought to the surface by the massive explosion. A huge geothermal unit is running in the Center of the crater. Its energy creates a protection shield that extends beyond the planet’s atmosphere. The objective of the unknown aliens is absolutely clear: they’re building an army to conquer the Earth! So people are sending a small spaceship to the Red planet with one mission: blow up the shield generator so they can launch missile attacks from the orbit. The spaceship will have to land in an isolated area, and then try to infiltrate into the alien conspiracy. You are the commander of the spaceship, and the fate of the Earth is in your hands!

Reference: accessed 26th June 09 http://starsashes.com/incinerate.html

Today’s game is a first time giveaway called incinerate. It’s a vertical scrolling schmup (space shoot’em up), with a small ship that you control with the mouse. The left and right mouse buttons select primary and secondary weapons. You can move the ship anywhere on the playing arena, avoiding buildings and other objects. You can destroy buildings, objects and enemy ships before they destroy you. Crashing into buildings and ships destroys your shields, but you can do this occasionally. You can pick up extra power ups once buildings have been destroyed. Repair droids will repair any damage caused by enemy fire or by crashing into buildings. On the way you have plenty of opportunity to pick up a variety of power ups that you can also purchase from supply depots that you’ll find shortly after starting a new level. You just have to fly your ship over the symbol that denotes the supply station. The supply depots contain several items such as rockets, armor, magazines for your guns as well as various upgrades such as your weapons and shields. You primary weapon requires magazines and the secondary weapon, which is fired using the right mouse button requires rockets. Occasionally in game you will also come across barnching routes. This aspect of the game gives some replayability to the overall game, though choosing either route doesn’t look much different. . Provided you have completed a checkpoint, you can return to the beginning of a checkoint by clicking on the continue button. Otherwise you’ll start a new game from the beginning.

If you want to play the game from a flash drive or even a CD ROM disk, you should be able to as it is free standing, which means there’s no important registry keys installed.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFvkSNDrbBk

Images:

All on one page:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Incinerate/?albumview=grid

As a slideshow:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Incinerate/?albumview=slideshow

The main menu gives you access to an options menu that allows you to change screen resolutions, starting from 640×480x16 to 1600×1200x32. You can toggle between full screen and windowed mode plus change the lighting from normal to advanced, though I haven’t checked what the difference between the two settings is okay, and finally there’s a sound and music slider for adjusting the volumes. The help menu is rather basic, with nothing more than the story line and an image of the various power ups available. There’s nothing about how to play the game either.

On starting the game a page opens up that allows you to create a new profile. You can set up more than one profile if you wish. Once this is done, a level map appears. I’m not sure if you can re select previous levels as I only played the one level (left it too late to play an extended game earlier this morning). Once in game you can see several symbols around the periphery of the playing area. These give information telling you how many rockets or magazines you have as well as informing you about the state of your shields.

Conclusion

I was only able to play the demo which consisted of six levels so cannot describe the later parts of ths game I thought the construction of the game was quite well made and the difficulty was good enough to create a reasonably decent game, that I would say is worth a good 6 out of 10; though, that said there are many schmups out there and overall I think this one is an average shooter. The above images and game play video should give you a good idea of the game.

Cheers! It was not long ago was replenishing games. Thanks GAOTD!