I'm continuing to play a little Bounce Arcade here and there, and lately it seems to be my go-to, just messing around VR pinball experience. It's pretty light and super easy to get into when I just want to play and not think too much.
Since the last time I posted about the game, I've been putting up some great scores on all the game modes. Since I mostly talked about Gunpowder Gulch before, I thought I'd talk a little about the next step up in difficulty, Asteroid Outpost.
As of this posting, I managed to barely slip myself into the top 10 for the leaderboards.
In Asteroid Outpost, your playing field is very much inside the engine room of a spaceship. In phase one of the board, your objective is to hit the objects lit by crackling electricity and then shoot them down into the engine core to charge it up. After you completely charge the engine, a secondary objective appears.
The four secondary objectives are as follows:
- Shoot the cannons -- basically target one of the cannons and then shoot the ball between cannons until you've hit them all and shoot it down a nearby tube. This is by far the easiest of the secondary objectives.
- Target the side chamber -- When the side chamber opens up, it's a bouncy mad-house of point generation. Once you hit all the bumpers inside the side chamber, shoot the lit up tube nearby and you're done.
- Charge up the spinners -- At the top right and top left of the playing field are two spinners. As you shoot the spinners, they charge the left and right sides of the top of the engine. Once you've charged both of them up, shoot the lit up tube to complete the secondary objective.
- Light all the arrows -- Arrows run from the corners of the playing field. Sometimes these arrows are pointing toward the center, and sometimes these arrows are pointing away from the center. Run the ball down all three arrows in a row, and they'll light green to indicate success. Once you've lit up all the arrows, shoot the ball into the engine and you'll be done with the secondary objective.
After you finish a secondary objective, the hull of the ship peels back and three large asteroids float out in space. You need to use your pinball (and other power-up balls) to destroy these asteroids and reveal the golden nuggets inside them.
Shoot the golden nuggets into the collection tubes while keeping your ball in play and eventually, you'll win the third objective and light up a part of the engine. Do this four times and your ship will jump to lightspeed so you complete the entire game loop.
To make things more difficult, enemy laser cubes will activate and target your game paddles with lasers each time you enter the asteroid field. If a laser hits your game paddle, it'll deactivate for a few seconds leaving you extremely vulnerable to losing your ball.
To make things EVEN MORE DIFFICULT, after you complete the game loop once, you'll be given a multiball in the asteroid field and have to keep them ALL in play or you'll have to restart. It gets to be a crazy frantic mess of balls, powerups, golden nuggets, and laser cubes you have to keep track of.
So there you go, that's the Asteroid Outpost game in Bounce Arcade. To be honest, of all the game modes (excluding the tutorial), the Asteroid Outpost is my least favorite playing field. Its mini-games just aren't as exciting as the other three modes, and the game loop is a little monotonous.
It feels like there's a missed opportunity to bring more sci-fi flair into the playing field! There should be more to the vastness of space than just asteroid mining. Right?! I mean, can I please have some kind of alien contact, ship repair, or planetary landing moments mixed into the asteroid mining? It really does feel like there could have been just a bit more sci-fi fun included. Even just one alien crawling around inside the hull of the ship would have been enough.
That all said, it's not a horrible board . . . just not my favorite. Happy to be in the top ten for now!
Happy Dueling!
No comments:
Post a Comment