S. Prism Destroyer – PS5 Review

S. Prism Destroyer is a run and gun style shooter from a small studio called MaidsWithGuns which was originally launched on Steam last year but was picked up by eastasiasoft for the console launch.

In the game you play as Amor, a “cute girl that fell in love with a boy whose passion was construction robots.”  She also likes punk rock music, her favourite food is chicken with fries and her favourite colour is pink.  She also “seems to be very affectionate with her jacket” so that’s something.   Her boyfriend, Chitzu, “was always wearing the jacket once gave by his mother.”

So, that’s the jacket situation covered.  Okay, this isn’t prize-winning prose but, thankfully, this is a shooter and so the plot, what little there is of it, doesn’t really matter.   All that does matter is that she’s got to make her way across countless levels of robot infested levels.

Set on a 2D plane, this is a very straightforward affair.  You move and aim with the left stick and you’ve got buttons to let you jump (and also rocket hover) and shoot.  That’s it.  Straight from the Contra playbook.  You can also hold R2 which locks Amor in place, letting her freely aim her gun without moving anywhere.  It’s all very easy to pick up.  But being an eastasiasoft game might make you think this’ll be a walk in the park but it really isn’t.

Each level has set enemy placements, which we’re pleased about as too many games use randomly-generated levels these days.  The enemies can approach from in front or behind and generally take just a few shots to put down.  But you also get fixed gun emplacements, electric floor traps and mounted flamethrowers that are all quite damaging and will slow you down a lot as they take quite a lot of damage before disappearing.  It’s kind of strange because you’re clearly well-armed, and there are a few temporary upgrades to pick up too, but these fixed environmental threats really take a beating.

Aside from those power-ups, the usual spread/rapid/extra firepower sort of things, you can also find the ‘Prysm Destroyer’ which is a super robot mech thing that you take over until the end of the level.  This will have one of three types of weapon.  Either a sword, an ice gun or an enemy-targeting lightning weapon.  The extra firepower is welcome but usually comes at the cost of suddenly having a lot more enemies to deal with.

When it comes to the mechanics and basic gameplay loop though, that’s pretty much it.  In fact, we were surprised to see the game loop it’s backdrops after just three levels.  The game isn’t particularly varied up until that point but then it just gives up on any creativity and just starts repeating itself, while getting a bit more difficult.  At just 12 minutes long, Contra didn’t have a ton of content but at least each level felt different to the last.  That might have been a better approach here.  But the action is fun for a while and the level of challenge is actually quite engaging.  It’s not particularly brilliant or original but it plays quite well.  It just loses its appeal quite quickly due to how simplistic it all is.

The  main issue though is with the visuals.  Aside from the backgrounds being drab and the enemy designs being quite plain and uninspiring, the game opts for a sort of pre-PS1 visual style.  2D gameplay with simple polygon visuals all drenched in a filter that takes away any remaining detail and makes it look like you’ve got Vaseline in your eyes.  It makes sense why indie devs so often use a 16-bit pixel-art style, because it’s timeless in some way, but the cheap PS1 look isn’t one that many people look back fondly on.

Also, a good part of the play area is taken up with HUD elements that absolutely get in the way, don’t look particularly appealing and should never have been there.  It’s the sort of thing they used to do on the ZX Spectrum or whatever.  Take up a load of the screen so that the processor had less work to do.  But on a PS5?  It just seems ridiculous.

But what you do get is a fairly dynamic, challenging shooter that takes some skill to get good at and we quite liked it.  It might not live long in the memory and it’s certainly not the best in the genre, in fact it’s not really any better than what we got in the ’80s but it was just about good enough.