Death Ray Manta SE Review (PC)

A lot of different twin-stick shooters have arrived in the last few years, from all-new installments made by independent developers, like Zenzizenzic, to fresh iterations in older series, chief among which being Geometry Wars 3.

Many try to take older recipes of the genre and enhance them in different ways, by adding fresh game types or mechanics, not to mention unique visuals, but others try to refine the actual tropes, distilling them into their core values.

One example of this is the new Death Ray Manta SE from studio The Future Of Videogames. While the original edition launched a few years ago, it's now being re-released with remastered visuals and mechanics.

Does Death Ray Manta SE manage to make a lasting impression or should you turn to other top-down, twin-stick shooters? Let's find out.

Gameplay

Death Ray Manta has something resembling a story, as you're a manta fish that can shoot lasers and must survive through stages and stages filled with enemies, but you shouldn't expect anything else from its "plot." Instead, the title relies on its gameplay mechanics to make a lasting impression and keep fans coming back to its experience.

As mentioned above, Death Ray Manta is a twin-stick shooter with a top-down perspective. Much like Geometry Wars, it uses a huge amount of colors and particle effects to ensure that your eyes are as solicited as possible, alongside your actual graphics card.

Moving the manta around and shooting foes are both slick and responsive, and your actual shots scatter around to hit as many enemies as possible. The core goal in each stage is to kill a number of opponents. While at first you don't have to clear the whole area of enemy fish, as you progress through the 32 levels, you soon have to destroy everything in your path.

Obstacles and enemies are quite varied. They include an array of shapes and sizes and many can even fire bigger bombs straight at your tiny fish. As such, it's essential that you pay attention to all your surroundings and to the enemies on, as well as off the screen.

This can be easier said than done. You need a few minutes to start making sense of what's going on, as well as to distinguish dynamic enemies, their projectiles, as well as static obstacles or things that move around on a predictable path.

Glorious visuals in Death Ray Manta SE

Fortunately, the first few levels don't try to flood the player with a myriad of distractions and dangers. Slowly but surely, as you keep on surviving, you're tasked with taking down more difficult enemies, while avoiding static and dynamic obstacles.

As an extra task, you need to also collect gems in order to get a better score. These gems seem like enemies at first, but you'll soon start to notice them more easily. However, they only remain on the screen for a short time, and as a result, it's often very risky to try and grab them. While surviving in Death Ray Manta SE can be pretty fun, challenging yourself to grab as many gems can be even more interesting.

Of course, like with many twin-stick shooters, death is unavoidable, especially until you come to grips with the colorful visuals and the varied enemies. Restarting is quick and easy, fortunately, so there's very little downtime in the game. Sometimes your death can be quite unexpected, as the levels aren't fully portrayed on the screen, so you need to steer your ship into various directions to see enemies and other hidden things.

As further testimony of its tongue-in-cheek nature, besides the outlandish "story" I mentioned above, the game also throws at you various words of encouragement as you keep on killing foes, not to mention slightly hard to understand facts about your manta's journey.

Reach gems in Death Ray Manta SE

Visuals and Sound

In terms of visuals, Death Ray Manta SE is an absolute blast. The pixelated visuals coupled with the rich neon colors and the fluid framerate make every moment in the game a blast. The particle effects are quite good, but as I explained above, it takes a bit of time before you can clearly make out what's happening in the level. Once you get to grips with everything, however, you'll really be able to enjoy the impressive visual spectacle of Death Ray Manta.

The soundtrack is also quite good, blending chiptune music with a house and techno vibe, matching the action on the screen quite well. However, the audio transition between stages gets extremely aggravating after a while, and unfortunately, there's no way to turn it off. This is quite a shame, as I eventually had to mute the game from the operating system just to keep it from getting on my nerves.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion