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Dreamcast review: Redux: Dark Matters
Sega held onto the Dreamcast for as long as it could, selling limited run games on its website well after the console's death in 2001. Still, Sonic's house gave up the ghost eventually. Enter publisher Hucast and designer René Hellwig, who just can't let it go. It's 2014 and they're still putting out brand new Dreamcast games like Redux: Dark Matters. A side-scrolling shooter made in the grand old style, Redux is very much of a piece with the hardcore arcade games typical of the Dreamcast. While it won't win the old machine any new acolytes, it handily demonstrates why the faithful remain, a demanding exercise in twitch reflexes painted in bold colors. Like its 2009 predecessor, Dux, Redux feels at home in the Dreamcast library. The two-dimensional shooter has you flying a spaceship from left to right, shooting other spaceships while collecting new weapons and trying not to blow up – it's precisely the sort of arcade-style game that defined Sega's last console. It's easy to pick up and play, difficult to master, and bears an unusually soft visual style. Dux and Redux both feature opening levels whose color palettes actually call the Dreamcast itself to mind, with muted, grey industrial walls and a tiny, blood-orange, triangular ship. It's like you're piloting the console's power light straight into its guts.
Brand new 2D shmup 'Dux' released ... for Dreamcast
It's a sad fact that at the end of every console war, a remainder of die-hard zealots from each camp stay behind, waving high their console's battle standard while refusing to endorse any and all future pieces of hardware. Such a camp surely exists for the Sega Dreamcast, and while time may have forgotten these stubborn warriors, the kind folks at developer HUCAST have not -- they recently released a 2D horizontal shoot-em-up titled Dux exclusively on the extinct piece of Sega hardware.Dux is currently selling for the bizarre price of $27.90. Fortunately, it won't be the last game to come out on the system -- HUCAST is nearing completion on another Dreamcast-exclusive shmup titled Last Hope: Pink Bullets, which was presumably co-developed by The Shins.
