FullBlast review for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

There?s not really too much to say about FullBlast beyond a) that it?s a completely generic shmup, and b) that, like Jack N? Jill DX and Tetra?s Escape before it, it?s another bargain-priced release from Ratalaika Games that offers trophy hunters an easy Platinum.

It?s hard to overstate just how by-the-numbers this game is. Your spacecraft is generic. Your enemies are forgettable. Your weapons are unimpressive. The dozen levels all blend together in every respect from the terrain to the dialogue to the enemy flight patterns, and they offer little in the way of difficulty. If you were to close your eyes and picture a shmup, it would look something like this

There are easy trophies to be had, because of course there are. I?m not complaining about this, to be clear, since I?ll always take another Platinum, but most of them will pop with little to no effort on your part.

Just about the only place FullBlast deviates from being the blandest game ever is in its level design. As easy as this game generally is, you will occasionally die, and when you do, your weapon reverts back to the most basic level. This is a problem, because you don?t get sent back to a checkpoint — which means that if, say, you happen to be fighting the level boss, you?re doing so with the weakest weapon imaginable, which in turn means that you?ll quickly run your way through however many lives you have left.

In general, however, that?s more an annoyance than a game-breaking issue. And that pretty much sums up FullBlast: it doesn?t do anything incredibly well, and the things it does poorly are so minor that it?s hard to get very worked up. If you want a short, easy shmup it?ll do, but otherwise, you can probably skip it.

Ratalaika Games provided us with a FullBlast PS4/PS Vita code for review purposes.