Antivirus PROTOCOL

I had hopes for Antivirus PROTOCOL to become more interesting than the demo I played a couple months ago. The full release still feels like a demo. The skill tree is nearly a straight line requiring level completion to continue with no interesting choices to make. The gameplay loop has three stages. You start by hovering directly over enemies. Then you kite green enemies. Then you look for blue enemies along the edge. There's only one boss shared across every 15 levels, and there's no other real way to approach the game with its limited system. There are a couple levels that are huge walls due to bad scaling. All other games I've played like this allow you to go back to a previous level, but this Antivirus PROTOCOL locks you into the new level. So, you end up spending several minutes grinding a handful of enemies until you build enough currency to finally get back into the linear progression. Honestly, I just can't find any reason I would recommend this game to someone.

not really a bullet hell and not really a numbers go up game. its somehow disappointingly short for any price above $2 and painfully long after about 2 hours. get it on sale and watch tv while you play or just skip it all together

Wide as a puddle, and deep as a... oh wait, its deep as a puddle too... Definitely a letdown from the reasonably promising demo. A little on the shorter end too, even for this genre, coming in at around 2 and a half hours. This isn't totally I will say upfront that the game isn't TERRIBLE or completely unenjoyable, just exceptionally mediocre as far as a game like this goes. It is probably a bottom 10 or even bottom 5 short incremental game. For this mediocrity the game is overpriced too, probably being more in line with 2 dollars instead of 5. The comparison between this game and Astro Prospector, both in the same bundle and pricerange, is a night and day difference. Astro Prospector blows it out of the water in just about every metric. Starting with the main flaw of this game, its uncreative and extremely linear skill tree. As others will rightfully point out, this is the most restrictive skill tree you will find in the genre, it is so linear that it often feels like it is a skill tree in name only. Progression in the skill tree is effectively gated behind a currency only dropped by bosses. These bosses are tough enough that you generally have to buy most, if not all of the basic stat upgrades in order to beat them. And this leads to the other half of the skill tree issue; its just basic upgrades. Every level of the skill tree comes with a damage upgrade and a life upgrade, usually a virus spawnrate upgrade too. As the levels go up the upgrade variety decreases as well. Attack speed was given out too early, and maxes out quickly, but what I think really exemplifies the lack of thought and care with the gameplay is how armor upgrades just completely disappear after the early game. The game almost never goes beyond the absolute basics. There are critrate and double resource drop upgrades that max out at 35%, a better game would have had them max out at 100% and worked that into the progression (no unique synergy with either critrate or resource collection either) . There are no lifesteal upgrades at all, bare minimum quality of life, even most of the upgrades that require the boss currency are very basic. The game also has very subpar ability progression. You unlock the minigun almost instantly, but it is effectively the only permanent weapon you unlock until the last few levels at the end of the game. For a strange reason the game keeps on trying to push temporary (5 seconds at best) powerups as your main form of damage progression beyond the basic stat increases. These powerups are not super reliable, and not as satisfying as a dedicated weapon unlock. In particular the game keeps trying to push the "Shock" powerup on you, which sucks as a powerup when you get it and will never get better. You would think that this would become a basic weapon later on, but it doesn't. The gameplay is also very basic with no redeeming qualities. The normal red viruses don't do any contact damage or have any unique features. Occasionally a chasing suicide virus will spawn, which is probably the highlight of gameplay. It is reasonably fun to get the hang of dodging it since it moves quite quickly. The green viruses on the other hand are just annoying. They have significantly more health than standard viruses and charge you VERY quickly at close range. The problem is that all your weapons are close range, so you are forced to get close. If they manage to hit you, not only do they deal damage but they also don't drop their special resource. This is particularly annoying early on when you first unlock them and don't know what they are capable of yet. The other enemies are no better. Boss is effectively just a big red virus, white virus is just a rare red virus, blue virus shoots basic and annoying screenwide lasers... The only area of the game it does a decent job in is with the music and visual design, both of which are more than adequate for the standards of short incrementals. The pixelated CRT artstyle is used so often for good reason, although it certainly isn't helping this game beat the "bland and uncreative" allegations. Overall, this is certainly a short incremental game of all time. If you just wanna relax for a couple hours and not have to think deeply about anything, it might fit the bill. Otherwise, definitely look elsewhere for your incremental fix. There are enough of them out there these days that it will take quite a while before you run out of games better than this one. This review has been a bit harsh on it when it is still just "mid" but the standards of the genre have long outpaced games of subpar quality like this.