Exo-Calibre – PS5 Review

Exo-Calibre is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up from London-based one-man studio, Vampixel Games.  It’s also published by eastasiasoft, one of many shoot ’em ups they’ve put out.  And this one is pretty typical of the genre and gives you pretty much exactly what you’d expect at this price point.

Set across six stages, this shooter sees you taking on a rogue AI threat (it’s always going to be robots or aliens) that is threatening to take over the world.  There are a few options initially though.  Story Mode lets you play with unlimited continues while Arcade Mode is a bit more traditional, limiting your continues and lives.  You also get Boss and Timed modes too.

Before you blast off you’ll need to pick from a choice of three pilots.  The game is anime themed which means they’re all young women aged between 18 and 21 and are practically bursting out of their pilot uniforms.  But, more importantly, each one has a different shot type – a linear laser, a spread-fire ‘burst’ and a short but powerful shotgun.  It’s worth experimenting, and you’ll unlock another three characters by beating the game a few times, but we found the laser to be the most optimal choice.

Once you’re into the game itself, it’s all pretty standard stuff.  You’ll be fine just using your primary weapon but the game also adds melee attacks for improved scoring and a thrust move that lets you boost your way through enemies and bullets (reflecting those back upwards).  The boost move is good for getting out of trouble and can be useful during boss battles which are really the only time the game offers up much of a challenge.

You’ll also be picking up money which can be spent, between stages, on upgrades.  You can beef up your weapon, hit points, lives and speed.  You’ll be best served focusing on your weapon though as otherwise you might not be able to keep up damage-wise.

Beyond all that though, this is very much a safe shoot ’em up that doesn’t take any risks and that’s where it lets itself down a bit.  Each stage feels like the last because they’re all just doing the same thing.  The enemy types are mostly just recycled from stage to stage, rather than each one having its own character and feel.  The boss battles, while fairly derivative, are better though with some good screen filling bosses that have some aggressive bullet patterns to deal with.  That said though, we were able to beat the game on our first attempt which isn’t great for longevity, especially as one finished playthrough will net you all of the game’s trophies.

And in terms of presentation, there’s nothing here to get too excited about.  The retro-style visuals are adequate but never particularly good and while we don’t mind them trying to humanise the pilots a bit, their inane chatter gets a little bit tiresome.

So, in the end, what you get with Exo-Calibre is a cheap, predictable shoot ’em up that doesn’t really feel all that fleshed out but it is playable and has a gentler level of challenge which might suit players that are new to the genre.  But there are better options out there for sure, including games from this publisher.