The first game to have been developed using the Microsoft’s XNA developer toolset, Schizoid sits somewhere between dual stick shooter and Pacman like devourer. Two ships, one blue, one orange, correspond to enemies of the same colour. The task that the players are set is to destroy each of these enemies by ramming into them with the similarly hued ship. Running into a foe of your opposing colour will cause your craft to explode. Different maze like maps and several enemy types flesh out this basic gameplay premise.
Enemies not only vary in size and shape, but also in behaviour. Similar to the variations of enemy behaviour in Geometry Wars, some hunt you down and some move more randomly. The most interesting enemy being one that lays eggs from which other enemies eventually emerge if not destroyed in time. Some powerups are available, such as a speed boost and a bomb, which when carried to you team mate explodes killing all surrounding foes. These little touches add slightly to the game, but, whilst its base concepts are not particularly terrible as a foundation upon which to build a game, Schizoid fails to deliver in its execution.
Make sense to you?
There are three ways to play Schizoid, and all involve two ships onscreen. Firstly there’s single player with a computer controlled bot to help you out. Secondly, there's co-op play with friend. This can be either local or online. Both these modes are fairly traditional and completely unsurprising, but Schizoid professes to have another ace up its sleeve in terms of gameplay. Uber-Schizoid puts the player in control of both ships simultaneously. In this mode the developers have been kind enough to draw lines from to each ship to the bottom corners of the screen corresponding to which joystick controls them. Unfortunately Uber-Schizoid still demands brain melting, savant like skill to coordinate the two crafts, and we imagine most players will give up trying after the first few levels.
Schizoid’s multiplayer is a little disappointing. Levels unlocked in a single player game have to be re-unlocked in multiplayer if you are to sample them with a friend. Also, as a result of this clear distinction between single and multiplayer, there’s no chance for someone to jump in during the single player mode, taking over the reins from your relatively inept computer controlled friend. We would have like to have seen some drop in and drop out play.
Imprecise and sloppy, Schizoid’s controls have the propensity to drive you mad. There’s no lack of great arcadey shooters on the platform with responsive movement, unfortunately Schizoid hasn’t taken cues from them. Sluggishly your ship travels around making the game a much duller experience than it could have been. Much of the time it feels as if you’re swimming through jelly, which doesn’t make for incredibly exciting and engaging gameplay, especially when the collision detection isn’t much friendlier.
This may look like they're speeding along, but in motion it's more like they're swimming in black custard.
For a game that bases itself on the sole premise of enemy destruction through collision Schizoid has incredibly poor performance when it comes to detecting when this happens. Several times we felt sure that we’d never made contact with the conversely coloured enemies only to find out the that the game thought otherwise. Unlike sport, where you expect to have a few arguments with the referee, videogames are supposed to hold the ability to make decisions that are correct on every occasion.
It’s quite frustrating to see a game that has some decent ideas struggling so badly in their execution. Unfortunately, Schizoid never propels itself beyond being average. Hampered by its poor controls, sluggish feel and poor hit detection, its decent premise falls down floundering in mediocrity. None of this renders the game unplayable, but it does lead to a lifeless, uninspiring experience.
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