Are you interested in trying Protöthea, a rather inventive shmup where you can aim your ship’s cannons with a flick of the wrist, slow down time, and circle-strafe enemy squadrons? Do you have a Windows PC? Good. Now go here, download the ancient PC demo, and forget you ever heard that the game was coming to WiiWare.
Or, if you insist — follow the jump for our full review.
This week, Ubisoft makes their WiiWare debut with Protöthea, a reimagining of the 2005 PC vertically-scrolling shooter in full 3-D. A joint effort between the original, Digital Builders design team and Mazes of Fate developer Sabarasa Entertainment, the new version features a handful of extra levels, enemies and power-ups, as well as the vaunted Wiimote and Nunchuk control scheme. But going into this review, I knew none of that — it was only after a stunningly mediocre playthrough that I felt the desire to find out what went wrong. And from that fresh perspective — which no doubt most of our readers will share — Protöthea isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just not much fun, either.
In addition to allowing small developers the freedom to create miniature titles, one of WiiWare’s more admirable strengths is in welcoming new or mainstream gamers gently into the fold, and if you posit Protöthea as a “My First Shmup,” the title does have some value. Dropping players into a spaceship that reminded me constantly of a headless Romulan Warbird, the game provides fairly intuitive controls — simply aim and fire with the Wiimote, maneuver and activate slow-motion with the Nunchuk — auto-saves your progress after every level; and only penalizes your health gauge when you mistakenly careen into enemy projectiles. Besides, the ship controls well; as you flick the analog stick this way or that, the warbird banks and evades enemy fire with grace, while always remaining pointed at your Wiimote cursor, and — for a while — I took simple pleasure in outmaneuvering my foes.
I say outmaneuver, because in Protöthea the traditional shooter concept of sending waves of enemies at the player has been (partially) done away with — instead, most flying foes will remain on-screen until defeated, reacting dynamically to your ship’s motions and making for impromptu dogfights that would be fairly fun if it weren’t for the somewhat sloppy shooter controls. At its core, Protöthea is half shmup, half light-gun shooter, but as any Umbrella Chronicles or Ghost Squad fan will tell you, the Wiimote is no GunCon — at least, not without the proper attachments. Unfortunately, neither my trusty Nyko Perfect Shot nor the Wii Zapper did a lick of good, because some brainiac decided to map primary fire to the A button (as opposed to the Wiimote’s trigger, B) and then set that control scheme in stone. Even the PC Protöthea demo allows the user to remap controls, but here the option is conspicuously absent. Needless to say, hammering on the top of the Wiimote with one’s thumb does little to encourage steady aiming. Still, the game is definitely pick-up-and-play — until you reach the second boss.
While each individual level has a nice shallow difficulty curve — slowly adding additional enemy ships to test your mettle — for whatever reason the difficulty ramps up considerably, and unfairly, in several end-level boss fights. One end boss has four plasma cannons constantly tracking your movement, and whether you strafe, remain still or zigzag, you get hit regardless. Another fires blasts in a nearly 360-degree spread without enough room to slip between the shots. These battles came down to a combination of repetition, dumb luck and volleys of my most powerful weapon applied incessantly, and though I prevailed, the “My First Shmup” theory does not.
Unfortunately, while we’ve ruled out the mainstream crowd, there’s almost nothing that will draw in the hardcore shmup fans, either. Compared to most scrolling shooters, Protöthea has very little to offer in the way of difficulty, with health powerups contained inside most every capital ship, appearing in intervals of thirty seconds or less; almost no strategy, with some admittedly clever guns but each obviously more powerful than the last; an utter lack of environmental interaction (everything below your ship, save the occasional enemy, is window dressing) and no score display. Yes, you heard me right; this is a shmup with no high scores. There’s also no story — regardless of what the press release might say about its “compelling storyline,” neither the game nor its manual references any kind of story whatsoever; you’re just tossed from one level to the next.
Lastly, there’s a little question of length. Including every level I had to replay from the beginning due to untimely death, my $10 and 261 blocks bought me only 2.5 hours of gameplay. I started playing after lunch, and finished without so much as a bathroom break. Upon completion, there was subsequent laughable opportunity to replay the game on Hard — but try as I might, I could not distinguish ‘hard’ in any way from the normal difficulty mode.
I don’t know if it’s still possible to track down a copy of the 2005 Argentinian original, but I still suggest you check out the PC demo. It has accurate, remappable controls, refined mechanics, and a score counter. And even if you only ever play that demo, you won’t be missing much.
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