When I first saw the screen shots for Project Root, I thought it’s been a good few years since I've played a good bullet hell game. After getting an early code for the Xbox One and a few hours with the controls, I can now safely say that this game is the true logical step for the Strike series that started all the way back on the good old Mega Drive (Genesis for our American friends).

 

Project Root controls almost the same as Desert, Jungle or even Nuclear Strike from EA back from the mid to late 90's. Some of you younger gamers might not know the Strike series, but believe me when these games first came out they were all Game of the Year hopefuls! Well, maybe not Nuclear Strike for the Playstation One, N64 and PC but you get the idea.

 

But like most games that spawn five games in little over six years and don't evolve much, people eventually lose interest and move on to the next shiny thing. The strike series has been all but abandoned. But thanks to OPQAM on the 28th April 2015 we will have Project Root that will be available on Xbox One, PS4 and PS Vita for $9.99 so would guess around £7. It is also a Sony cross-buy so buy the game on PS4 and you can download it free on the PS Vita.

 

So a little detail about Project Root: you control a futuristic Plane/Helicopter thing but the only detail you need is the fact it has a ton of weapons at your disposal. The controls are easy to work out but as Project Root plays like a 20 odd year old game I had a little trouble to relearn how things used to be back in the good old days.

 

The left analog stick controls the aircraft’s acceleration and strafe movement, while the right analog stick handles aiming and the aircraft rotation. Then to use some of the fine weapons you have the right trigger that fires the machine gun (air weapon) and the left trigger fires the missiles (ground weapon), then lastly you have the right bumper that will fire a special weapon if one has been collected.

 

I'm not going to go into the story in this preview as in these games the story is not the main reason to play, but you will find some crazy things going on in the background. The main reason to play this game is the fact that is handles brilliantly and is a joy to play, the game is not out for a month or so but the only niggles that I had playing the early build of this game were the sounds of the enemy’s ships or tanks blowing up just didn't feel satisfying and from what I played there was no voice over work at all.

 

Some people will not complain about this but the written text on the screen was very small and I had to move from the sofa to read what was going on in the game, I know only tiny problems and I for one would be happy to put down £7 to play this fine game in the future.