Darklaga is the latest game offering from the int13.net stable, which brought high quality graphics gaming to the Pocket PC world in the shape of the excellent Crazy Kart, which I reviewed early this year.

Based loosely on the 80's classic arcade game Galaga (sequel to Galaxian), Darklaga is a game of the classical Shoot 'em Up genre.  The game concept is one of the oldest in the arcade game world - you (a Zoid agent) are the sole space craft (a Georoid) defending the world from the bad guys (space pirates) who just keep on coming.  Galaga has been given both a functional and graphics make-over by int13 to produce Darklaga which can, at times, have the screen positively seething with vibrant colour accompanied by excellent sound effects.

The Story:

Engage pirate raiders aboard your Georoid, vaporize their weapons using your shield technologies, steal their energy to unleash highly potent attacks of your own, cut them in half with ricocheting blades, fire homing napalm missiles and watch them burn, melt them with your laser beams, or turn off all your advanced weaponry and go in with your basic equipment to get the highest score out of it.

Features:

• Incredible Graphics, including professional 2D artwork, handcrafted "pixel art" backgrounds and many realtime eye candy effects.
• Instant Play, very fast loading time and save state system enabling to restart the game exactly where it was left.
• Smooth Gameplay, with intuitive stylus or keypad controls, a clean interface, and console quality game engine providing 60FPS refresh rate on most devices.
• Three Difficulty Modes Adapted for Most Players
  
  
  • Tourist : Really easy even for the beginners (includes tutorial)
  • Normal : For the average player
  • Hard : Not as easy...
• Seven Others Special Modes to Unlock
  
  
  • Extreme for the hardcore players who need a real challenge
  • Time Attack
  • Geo-Destruct (+one secret level)
  • Oldschool
  • Warning Forever
  • Reversed
  • Freeze!
• Highly Configurable, Many rendering, gameplay and controls options to configure the game exactly to your tastes and to the performances of your device.
• Many Hours of Gaming
  
  
  • 15 High Quality Levels (not including secret levels)
  • Seven Worlds to Explore.
  • Three Bosses to Master.
  • Tons of Secret Features to Unlock.

Your Georoid is initially armed with a simple blaster weapon but may be enhanced with up to three types of upgrade - offence, defence and weapon - which can fall and be picked up from enemy craft when they are destroyed.  Your craft is moved around the screen either using the stylus or the D-pad, with both fire control and fury mode (see below) being configurable for automatic or manual (button) use. Points are gained by destroying enemy ships and grazing (passing close to) enemy weapons fire, additional lives are awarded at various scores.  Additionally, destroying enemy craft also increases the Georoid's ability to absorb enemy hits, this is known as Psyko-Ki.  The enemy craft are armed with just one type of weapon (cannonballs) but can fire a huge number of them at any one time, in a variety of patterns;  they can also try to destroy your Georoid by ramming it.

Weapon upgrades are either Energy Blades, Inferno Lasers or Napalm Rockets. 

• Blades can ricochet off enemy craft and destroy one or more per blade. 
• Lasers are a simple but powerful energy weapon aimed straight ahead of the Georoid. 
• Rockets are a powerful but slower weapon launched to either side of the Georoid and then accelerating towards the targets. 

Upgrades may also be Overloaded by picking up one of four types of overload objects - when overloaded, weapons become far more powerful but only for a few seconds, other upgrades are also improved by overloading.

Offence upgrades consist of the Peacemaker, Fire Rate Enhancer and the Yellow Multiplier.

• The peacemaker multiplies the number of output blades, lasers or rockets, even higher when overloaded.
• The fire rate enhancer increases the rate at which a weapon fires, in the case of the lasers the damage dealt by the weapon increased.
• The yellow multiplier increases the amount of points scored for each enemy craft destroyed.

Defence upgrades include the Shield Generator, Fury Mode and Blue Multiplier. 

• The shields upgrade makes the Georoid impervious to enemy ramming attacks and when overloaded the Georoid is totally indestructible.
• Fury mode increases the amount of Psyko-Ki benefit gained from destroying enemy craft.
• The blue multiplier, like the yellow, increases the amount of points scored for each enemy craft destroyed.  It has the one downside, however, that any lives that would have been gained through the score increase are lost.

There are other methods for gaining further points that I won't go into here but, suffice to say, Darklaga is a very much more complex version of the simple arcade game on which it is based.

Darklaga has three modes of play - Tourist, Normal and Hard.  Tourist is essentially a training mode which has just three levels, reduced enemy strength and game complexity, plus on-screen messages to help the new player learn the game. Normal and Hard modes have 15+ levels and, in the case of the Hard game, increased enemy health and strength.  The game also has hidden features which are unlocked by completing various stages of the games.

As I have already indicated, Darklaga has excellent graphics and sound, adding greatly to the game playing experience.  The game has a wide range of options for configuring both game play (auto-fire, multipliers, etc.) and control (buttons, graphics quality, sound, etc.) settings.  I actually prefer the game with the graphics set for speed not quality as this removes most of the background images, which I found could make the screen a little too busy for my taste at times.

I have to say that Shoot 'em Up games are not my normal style of game - I actually bought Darklaga for my six year old son after he got hooked on the trial version, however I must admit that the game is very enjoyable and I am now getting hooked myself.

Unlike the Crazy Kart trial, which only offered a brief but tantalising opportunity to try the game, the trial version of Darklaga is a fully playable copy of the game but with just a limited number of levels available.  Even if you don't intend to buy the game, the trial is well worth downloading, though be prepared to buy it later... after you become hooked!

int13.net have once again produced an excellent product with the same attention to detail and graphics of Crazy Kart.  Darklaga is a high quality, very playable, entertaining and enjoyable game (it's addictive too), well suited to use on the Pocket PC platform. At just USD$9.95 (currently) it represents excellent value in my opinion (Crazy Kart is also going cheap at the moment!).

Darklaga wins a high score of 9.9/10