June 17, 2014

Roche Fusion Review

"Roche Fusion is a fast paced, exploding, over the top shoot-em-up. The player fights ever more agressive, deadly, and crazy waves of enemies while upgrading their ship with more weapons, shields and other items. Also: explosions."

(From the Roche Fusion website.)

Roche Fusion is a very satisfying arcade shoot-em-up game. While it doesn't necessarily stand out in any specific way, it's very addictive and enjoyable and I highly recommend checking it out. It's free!

NOTE: Roche Fusion is currently in BETA so everything is technically subject to change. According to their website, just about everything should be representative of the final release, but there are things that could change.

Gameplay

The general concept behind Roche Fusion is being an arcade spaceship shooter. You kill things until your green bar at the top fills up and you level up.

Everything about this game feels very polished.

Once you've leveled up and cleared out all the enemies, you're able to choose from one of three upgrades. These upgrades have a bit of random chance to them so you'll be given different sets to choose from each time you level up. Upgrade options include enhancements to your ship's firing such as multi-directional shots, homing missiles, or a smaller companion ship on your side. There are also special weapons such as 3-way lasers, cluster missiles, and black holes which can be activated via buttons and have a cooldown on them. Typical bullet hell game stuff.

I've yet to see any sort of extra life upgrade in the game. It may be there, but I have not found it. So when you lose a life, it could be for good.

Enemies will randomly drop small green orbs which give you specific buffs or boosts to your ship. These can include (minor) upgrades to your cooldowns, firing speed, damage, etc. The upgrade orbs typically drop where the enemy was destroyed, which is typically still in a cluster of other enemies. So a risk-reward scenario is given for attempting to grab the upgrades. They do disappear after just a few seconds.

The waves of enemies you encounter are pretty procedural. While the same general concept applies, you will have a different experience each time you play.

Boss battles are very challenging but very rewarding. Just make sure you kill this guy before he gets too long!

After a few waves, you will encounter boss battles. The first boss turns into a game of regenerative health Snake. This can be both challenging and infuriating, depending on which weapons you've unlocked before you reach the boss.

You get a score with progressing multipliers that you can use to compete in the online leaderboards for the game.

The HUD shows you all the relevant information, such as your current score, your multipliers, and your progress towards the next level at the top. At the bottom you're given which unlocks you have available as well as their cooldowns. Your shield status and upgrades are also at the bottom right.

The gameplay is smooth, tight, and unforgiving at times. Controls feel precise, and I always feel in control of my actions. (For better or worse.)

Gamepad controls feel intuitive and comfortable.

Roche Fusion allows for both keyboard and mouse gameplay as well as the use of a gamepad. The game supports singleplayer and local co-op with separate sets of controls.

Visuals

Roche Fusion's visuals are very stunning. Crisp, clear models are present and the text is very sharp and legible.

The game's graphics scale really well from low resolutions up to 2K without any muddiness or blurriness.

Colors are bright and saturated. The lighting and particle effects are fantastic - without making me feel like I'm going to have a seizure like many of these kinds of games.

This game is visually stunning. And everything is so smooth, crisp and polished!

The sheer amount of colors and particles flying around make it easy to get lost in the sea of shine, but that's par for the course for a game like this.

Roche Fusion runs great, even at 2K, with a very smooth and stutter-free gameplay experience even while recording. However, I am noticing that my frame rate does not appear to go past 48-50 FPS. I experience this at all resolutions, 720p, 1080p, and 2K. This isn't a huge problem, as the game is still running very smoothly and not experiencing any frame drops or stuttering, but it's still strange to see it locked at such a specific point.

Options Menu

The options menu in Roche Fusion is where I get pretty disappointed.

There is a "Game" tab in the options menu which only has one toggle - whether or not to send usage statistics to the developer. This also toggles the online leaderboard on or off.

In 2014, I would like to see a bit better graphics options menu than this. Typically indie developers have more ability to implement the appropriate options than AAA devs, so I would love to see this fixed before full release.

The "Audio" tab features a master audio slider, as well as effects and music audio sliders. This is okay. I'm not sure what else would be needed.

The "Controls" tab is actually pretty impressive. Each player (of the two players for local co-op) has re-bindable keys, with an alternate key binding for gamepad usage. Props to them on this one.

The "Graphics" tab however needs a complete overhaul. Your graphics options consist of five toggles:

Start in full screen
Distortion effects
Many particles
Screen shaking
Save screenshots as .png

Where... are the resolution, aspect ratio, refresh rate, or V-Sync options? They don't exist. Better yet, there's not even a configuration file I could find to manually edit them myself. The game seems to just run in a 720p window or your native desktop resolution at full screen.

I was able to run Roche Fusion at 2048x1152 by forcing my monitor to that resolution and then running the game in full screen, but ideally I should just be able to choose that in the options menu.

In this menu, I would really like to see proper resolution and refresh rate options - ideally with support for up to 2K or 4K resolution and 120hz and 144hz refresh rate if possible - Anti-Aliasing options, anisotropic filtering options, etc. Out of personal preference, I would also like to see "save screenshots as png" moved to the "game" tab. It more properly fits there and would give a bit more population to that menu.

Audio

I don't have a whole lot to say about the audio.

The sound effects are good for the kind of game this is - not too cartoony, but not trying to be hyper-realistic, either. The background music is fun and enjoyable and fits the theme of the game. It's pleasant to listen to while playing.

Overall the sounds are mixed very well and add to a great experience with the game.

Conclusion

Overall, I would definitely recommend Roche Fusion. Being a free game (at least while still in beta) you have nothing to lose in trying it for yourself.

Roche Fusion is an addictive, fun arcade shoot-em-up experience with enough challenge, unlocks and online leaderboards to give it some life for quite some time.

Despite being in beta, the game shows a lot of polish - graphically and in terms of gameplay - and I've been really impressed by that.

The options menu could use an overhaul, but overall the game is great.

Thanks for checking out my Roche Fusion review!

You can download the latest beta of Roche Fusion for PC and Mac here.