When you kick off Omega Five you can choose between two characters I opted for the heavy shooting space pirate at the beginning, but I found the cybernetic female more my style. She has a 360 degree laser beam and a claw that locks on and latches on to enemies.
The first level puts you in an arctic wonderland. Enemies come at you in waves from the front and all of the sudden a giant robot rushes in with a punch from behind. The hulking mech takes about a fourth of the screen and starts making lines of ice for you to shoot through. I was really glad I picked the character with the rotating laser now because by turning the analog stick I was able to hit the ice and a group of flying mechs in one shot.
Omega Five continues by bringing you in a base where robots stick to the ceiling. Usually two come at the same time so you throw the lock-on chain to hit one and focus the laser on the other. The first level has lots of situations where your gun fire is spread across two targets. To make things more challenging you have to hit concentrate on destroying four targets when you get up to the boss at the end of the level. The boss’ pattern has four triangles spread out and shoot then they come together to form a square. When the boss transforms into a square the vulnerable points for the separate triangles are contained inside. You have a choice. You either brave going into the tiny area contained inside the square or play it safe and wait for the triangles to separate.
As you can tell, boss battles aren’t about dodging bullets. This isn’t a bullet hell shmup, it’s more R-Type-ish than anything else. For the low price of 800 Microsoft Points ($10), I’m pretty excited about it.