Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer

December 16,2008 - After all of the dual-stick shooters we’ve played in the past few years, it’s nice to be playing one that sticks to the classic side-scrolling format that most ignore these days. Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer has arrived on the PlayStation Network to offer some old-school action to give shoot ‘em up fans something to do during the holiday season.



Like most side-scrolling shooters, the story has very little effect on whether you’ll have fun in Soldner-X or not. Serving as the backdrop to the game’s action, the story revolves around the Earth being nearly taken over by some mysterious force as you take control of the tenth prototype of a special ship made to defeat that force. That ship is called the Soldner-X. You will get some small breaks during gameplay as the narrator explains what is happening, and they serve as a nice opportunity to calm down and ready yourself for the next section of the game. Some may be dismayed to hear that there are only 4 levels in the game, but this actually isn't a problem since each level is split up into several large, distinct areas with their own bosses. The first level alone switches from a city to a jungle before ending in a nearly-destroyed city, and all of the parts are large enough to stand on their own as full blown levels if developer SideQuest Studios had chosen to break them up that way.

Soldner-X’s gameplay is influenced by a bit of Gradius and a bit of Ikaruga with the way its weapon set-up and chain system works, respectively. You start the game with just a pulse cannon, which fires your standard laser bullets, and a beam gun, which fires a large bolt of lightning in front of you. They’re fairly weak at first, but with power-ups and the use of the chain system, you can build up those two main weapons to use against the waves of enemies you come upon.

A fatigue meter depletes as you fire a weapon, making it essentially useless until it cools down. It really helps balance the gameplay since it doesn't allow you to be overly reliant on only one weapon, unless you pick up weapon cooling power-ups or regulate your shots by keeping an eye on the fatigue meter. Thankfully, Soldner X automatically switches to your next weapon once the meter empties so that you aren't completely unarmed once you overuse a weapon.As you play through the game, you’ll find more weapons to use along with secondary weapons like a shockwave bomb that give you a hefty arsenal of tools to use if you’re able to earn them while playing through the game.

The chain system in Soldner-X is a bit complicated at first, but it reinforces the game’s focus on not allowing you to just stick with one weapon for the whole game. A meter in the bottom right corner of the screen will fill up as you kill enemies and once it’s full, you must switch to another weapon to fill it up once more by continuing to kill baddies. At that point, you’ll need to switch once more to complete the chain level and then switch again to release the extra power-up and start another chain. As complicated as it is to explain, the chain system is a bit simpler to grasp once it clicks and you understand what is going on. At first it requires filling up the meter and switching twice, but as you complete chains successfully, it’ll require more as you level up your chain. Once you’re able to get it down, it’ll definitely help you get better at the game and be able to brave the game’s harsh difficulty.

Soldner-X continues a long line of difficult shooters that have been traditionally called “bullet hell shooters”, meaning that you’ll find enemies shooting so much that the screen is covered with bullets. This game definitely will not take it easy on you even on the very easy difficulty, but it’s not necessarily the frustrating and cheap kind of difficulty that can make a game no fun to play. Luckily, the game lets you choose how many continues to play with and as you keep playing, you’ll go up in rank and earn the right to have a bigger supply of continues to get further in the game even if you’re not very skilled.

Soldner-X offers a good variety of levels that change the amount of damage you can take along with how quickly or slowly your other meters empty or fill up, so it makes it easy to just find your ideal difficulty and play to your hearts content. With its old-school style set-up with some new-age tweaks to let almost anybody of any skill get in and, the four stages are very much replayable, especially when you have a friend join you for some local co-op.

Because it’s a shoot ‘em up, Soldner-X sticks with a lot of classic style of ships and environments, which is perfectly fine. As one of the few high-def games of its kind, this game definitely has a lot of beautiful environments that make your typical jungles, caves, and cities look really nice. The game successfully makes them feel more like actual places rather than just images plastered on the background. The level design is pretty good, though some odd choices in the caves on the second level add some frustration when the game speeds up and tries to push you through some tight spaces that cause you to get stuck and bang into nearby walls until you die.


The game has some nice music that is what you’d really expect from a shooter these days, though not having a custom soundtrack ability is a bit unfortunate at this point with all of the other nice features that the game has. It’s also interesting that the narrator will speak up when you’re doing well or when you’re playing lousy in a bit of a cheesy manner.

With the holiday rush past us, Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer is coming out at a nice point in time where you might want to sit down and pay the $10 to play some quality shoot ‘em up action as things wind down a bit. Soldner-X is definitely a very hard game, but it offers enough features and gameplay mechanics that help make it more manageable to keep the game feeling more challenging than frustrating and cheap to be worth the $10 price tag. The only awkward part of this Asian game may be the weird German name that at least makes it stand out amongst the crowd of quality shooters on PSN already.

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