Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer (Horizontal Space Shooter in 720p HD)

First impression! This is so R-Type!!! For those who is horizontal space shooter dummy.. no worries, you can find more info here. Lazy to explain ;-)

I gotta admit I only played R-Type during my hey days of using Atari ST (Yup, you heard me right. Atari ST! In my personal opinion, very poor as a personal computer but great as a gaming machine. Afterall, it's Atari.) and even then, the graphics are impressive, the music is heart thumping techno (thanks to the built-in MIDI) and the game, one of the hardest to beat. Really pushing your eyes and hand coordination to the max. Absolutely LOVE IT and I'm sure alot of ardent gamers out there would in one time or another come across this game.

Anyway, that way back during the early 1990s. Right now, development of personal computers have progressed by leap and bounds. Every 6 months, we have something new. Love it or hate it. That's the way it is and because of such advancements in the processing power of both CPU and Video cards, I gotta say the year of 2007 onwards marks the era of pure and sheer gaming pleasure.

Which brings me to the topic today. I'm talking about the newest horizontal space shooter video game, Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer, developed by SideQuest Studios and published by eastasiasoft. It is in development as downloadable game for Playstation 3 (PS3) on the PlayStation Store and as physical product for PC. The downloadable PS3 version will most likely be arriving Winter 2007 over the Playstation Network (PSN), whereas the PC version will be available Nov 2007 @ Play-Asia.com.

In the fastest and most effective possible manner, I'm going to list down all the features of this upcoming game (I highlighted those with GREEN text to indicates what matters to me:

• 12 stages of beautiful parallax graphics and animations, staged across 4 fantastic world/space settings
• High definition graphics in 720p (16:9)
• Supports 2-Player Co-Op Play (simultaneously)
• Beautiful weather effects (such as rain, fog and lightning)
• Detailed background animations
• Classic design, yet state-of-the-art shooter technology
• Unique upgrade weapon system with five standard weapon types
• Never before seen tactical elements such as chaining, effectiveness system, 'berserker' mode and much more
• Plenty of hidden bonus features
• More than 20 extras (with both positive and negative effects!)
• Addictive collection quests
• Over-the-top boss fights
• Features a superb soundtrack and sound effects
• Bi-lingual story mode (English/Japanese)
• Six modes of difficulty: very easy, easy, normal, hard, impossible, nightmare
• Easy to learn, yet tough to master Online high score ranking

• Constant frame rate (60fps)

Ya da, Ya da, Ya da, enough of description, let me illustrate :-)

I wanted to showcase a YouTube trailer but decided it will do the game no justice. Thus, here is a slightly higher res streaming video for your enjoyment. When I watched this trailer, there's only 1 thing on my mind. I can't wait to play it. The graphics intensive and the music is heart thumping. I have always been a fan of shoot-em up and the soon to be released Söldner-X is a testament that this genre is not dead yet.

I will not be able to give you a review of this game as no demo is available yet. But keep your eyes out for this shooter. It will definitely be a great addition to your library of games especially to those who have Widescreen LCD Monitor/TVs and PS3. For those with PCs, here's the requirements (although I believe you should look more at the Recommended specs which honestly in my opinion, should not even be any issue to most PC owners nowadays).