Project Root Review - Blast Your Way Through A Bunch of Uninteresting Areas With No Checkpoint System

Written by Stephen Varner  on May 04, 2015

Reviews: All of the mechanics work for Project Root but, unfortunately, firefights only boil down to an exercise in repetition as you circle strafe enemies.

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Project Root is a twin stick, top down shoot'em up that asks you to blow up a whole lot of baddies.

The first thing that strikes you when starting Project Root is just how simple everything is. There is four menu choices for Play, Options, Credits or Change Profile. The Options menu is just a slider for music and sfx volume. There is no co-op or multiplayer so “Play” takes you straight to the mission screen. You play as Lance in his airship and launch one man offensives on large open mission areas filled with a mix of land, air and sea based baddies. Whether by accident or design I couldn't shake how much about the game reminds me of some of the old school shoot'em ups I played that go all the way back to the NES days. That feeling largely lingers throughout the experience as you'll find that everything about the game from the controls to the way it delivers its narrative is about as basic as can be.

When you launch each mission you'll go to an alternating pair of screens with your two main characters, Lance and his mission controller Synch that lay out the context of the mission. Here again the presentation is about as simple as I've ever seen. The pictures of each character are static and never change. There is no voice over dialogue so everything is delivered by text. My biggest problem with that is how that carries over into the actual gameplay. You'll receive mission updates by text down in the bottom right corner of the screen. The problem with this is that when you're in the middle of fighting it's generally not a good idea to look away from the action. The game can be challenging and there's usually so much happening on screen to pay attention to that looking away even for a second will get you riddled with damage or killed. You start with three lives and you're going to want to make the most of them because once you run out the mission is over. There is no checkpoint system or mid mission saves and given that most missions will generally take 20 to 40 minutes to complete you can see why each life lost can be stressful. Almost every primary and secondary objective consists of flying to a specific area of the map and blowing everything you find to kingdom come. Occasionally there will be some larger units and boss size enemies to fight but they're really just damage sponges with no real hook about them to approach them differently. Get used to circle strafing pretty much everything you come across. Variety in mission structure is hardly Project Root's strong suit.



Destroyed enemies will drop extra lives, repair modules and special weapons. Pick these up whenever you see them because they won't hang around long and they can often mean the difference between getting through that next set of enemies and getting blown out of the sky. Repair kits and extra lives pop up scarcely enough to make you feel like it's definitely something you need to grab for fear of getting 30 minutes into a level and getting a game over, forcing you to start from the beginning. Other special drops all come with a limited number of uses and provide you with cluster missles, a defensive blast that eliminates incoming fire or a focused beam that can take out lots of small enemies at once or do big damage to a boss unit. Use them as you get them because they drop often and picking up a new one will override whatever you have left of your current one.

Once you finish each mission you'll be given experience points that you can use to upgrade your ship. It was nice to see that these upgrades really have a noticeable effect with each tier in how your airship handles. These upgrades include your speed, standard and special weapons, handling, airframe, and defensive measures. The handling slot in particular governs how fast your ship can turn and each upgrade gives a substantial jump to the ability to effectively fight.



Project Root isn't anything special to look at. Explosions look kind of flat and there's not that many enemy types. The mission areas are large but are mostly uninteresting to look at. You've got levels in the snow, a volcanic area, over water and in the rain, and a lot of enemy bases that kind of blur together after a while. Everything runs at a nice crisp framerate though and I only noticed a small bit of slowdown in one area of the game. With absolutely no VO and music that mostly just blends in with the gunfire and explosions I really had no reason to not just listen to my own music while playing.

This is a game that's all about moving from area to area and blowing things up. If that sounds simple it's because from top to bottom this game really is. All the mechanics work but unfortunately the firefights mostly become a loop of circle strafing that is uninteresting at best or dizzying and irritating at worst.