Smiley Face all Over the Place

What can I say about Smiley Face all Over the Place?  Well, It's a top-down Asteroids-ey shooter wherein you play as one of three very different stereotypical characters (kind of like in the "Zombies" mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops but without all the chemistry that made it worth putting up with their nonsense), each with different weapons, to take down hoards of triangles, squares, and one of those beach duck things from Super Mario Sunshine.

The characters are all designed fairly well.  Their "bombs" all serve their purpose in a team situation; there's the shield, the buff and the destroyer.  The 2 player mode is integrated well, too.  At any time, you can simply press enter to have player 2 join.  Of course, he will be controlled by the arrow keys, so he will be immediately hindered with the inability to move diagonally, but he also gets the mouse, which is much better for aiming than the "IJKL" keys.  I imagine it works well that way.  After all, I can't think of any way to avoid the arrow keys in this case, so giving the poor sap who got stuck with them a different advantage balances out the gameplay interestingly.

On the subject of balance, though, solo players will find that there's not much of it.  One of the character's descriptions is that he is, quote, "BLOODY AWESOME," so the game is pretty much telling you outright who's the man to choose.  Granted, I didn't try playing with the blue man who shoots arrows everywhere except where you aimed, but I think it's fair to take a character with that description out of the running.

The game looks fine, I guess.  Nothing much to comment about on the aesthetics, but that still leaves the burning question: is it fun or interesting?  Well, there's a bit of the former to be had, at least.  Slow movement speed is a thorn in my side as always, and there are pretty much only two strategies in this game: circle strafe around the enemies and blast them to Valhalla or don't and die.

I haven't yet beaten the duckbill circle of death in the fifth wave, so at least this game has given me a reason to keep playing.  All-in-all, it's a game.  Yeah.  One of those.  That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay smiley

Links
pretty faces and smiley places: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24634