Captain Lycop : Invasion of the Heters Demo

According to movies and video games, it’s only a matter of time until our planet is going to be invaded by a race of menacing aliens that want to destroy us. However, the huge distances between stars and planets make such a possibility highly unlikely, so we can relax for now. On the other hand, it would certainly look cool to shoot lasers at alien spaceships.

Captain Lycop : Invasion of the Heters is a retro shoot ‘em up with fast-paced gameplay mechanics and very basic graphics. Although the core concepts should be fairly familiar to the fans of the genre, there are a few new ideas in there as well, such as the fact that you can customize your ship with new parts by gathering materials from the enemies you destroy.

The story is a bit silly, on the other hand, although it is obviously not designed to be taken seriously. Hence, the Earth is attacked by what appears to be a giant bunny spaceship, which is actually a disguise for evil aliens that wish to exterminate humans from the universe. Your goal is to fight these invaders and make sure the human race survives to live another day.

The gameplay is a bit annoying, given the fact that you move using the keyboard and the mouse at the same time. It can be a bit too disorienting to keep the ship pointed in the right direction, especially since the low resolution can make it difficult to see anything during a heated battle. On top of that, your ship also moves rather slowly at first, and the bullets are pretty difficult to dodge.

Speaking of which, the difficulty level can be a tad frustrating, mainly because you can only sustain a couple of hits before you die and have to start anew. Sometimes this means skipping through cutscenes or flying over considerable distances, which is not exactly fun. The graphics are nothing to write home about, even if they are technically designed to appear as old as possible.

There are a few things wrong with Captain Lycop : Invasion of the Heters, but hardcore shmup lovers should be able to overcome them and focus on the good parts. Thus, the challenging levels can be quite fun under the right circumstances.