Hands-On

Guns'n'Aliens

Sinistar is a very straight-forward game. Good, bad, who cares? You're the guy with the gun. Unfortunately for you, the aliens have guns too. Big ones. You have your main "mining laser," used to mine asteroids for crystals or blow hell out of enemies. Additionally, you have up to eight other weapons to use in your quest for, of course, stopping the aliens from destroying the universe. The eight "special weapons" each take crystal energy to use, which you must collect by destroying asteroids and collecting the crystals therein. The most important of your special weapons is the Sinibomb, which is the only thing capable of hurting (you guessed it) the Sinistar.

Satisfying boom

Power crystals

You also have an assortment of powerups, which cost crystal energy as well. Most important is the ability to heal damage to your ship; you can also make enhancements such as shields around your ship, or a temporary speed booster. Use your crystrals wisely, though, because sinibombs are expensive. Conserving your crystals is about the extent of the strategy you'll be employing but with all the wannabe half-strategy games out there, who needs something that's half baked?

Got 'em

Planet Generic

Expensive but necessary

Shooting the Sinistar with sinibombs or destroying the workers which are building it are the only two ways to combat its construction. This turns the game into a race against time, then, because not only is the damage to the Sinistar constantly being repaired, but there are an infinite supply of workers repairing it. So, the objective is to do lots of damage, and do it really fast. And you have to do all this while avoiding being destroyed by enemies. Hey it worked for Luke and Anakin, so why wouldn't it work out for you?

Enemy sighted!

Fighting a space cockroach

Unfortunately, you have to take constant breaks in the action to build up crystal reserves (or vice-versa). Let me tell you, if you thought collecting moving crystals in 2D was hard, well, collecting them in 3D is bordering on aggravating. It's important to get the crystals with extra power, though; in the demo, there were yellow and blue crystals, with blue weighing in at 5x the power of yellow. This means it's generally worth your time to chase after blue crystals, even if there are a cluster of a few yellow ones.

Green haze?

I've got jaundice!